Amon knelt on the ground, his hand laid gently upon the broken gauntlet of Keagan, he looked up into the sky at the plume of black smoke that would’ve blended into the night sky if it wasn’t such a clear night on a full moon, thoughts flooded the front of his mind, the base had been attacked, and aluric only gave back one of Keagan’s gauntlets, where was the other one, destroyed, sold, hidden away, he had kiara and pix with him, so that meant that he entrusted Aux or grahm to attack the base,

“Amon”, he heard a small voice calling to him, his mind drowned it out, in favor for the rest of his inflammatory thoughts, consuming his sanity,

“AMON”, the voice called out again,

“AMON, lets get moving”, he heard, snapping out of his own thoughts, it was Yumi, she had been calling out to him for a few seconds now, he could feel the warmth of her hands, he was taken aback by how calm she seemed in this whole situation, she knelt down to him, picking up the gauntlet and hugging it tight, she rushed pass Bard, making her way towards the base,

“Amon lets go”, Bard called out to him, Bard had turned away, wanting to chase after yumi. But he knew that Amon needed someone right now, he prepared himself to speak, to rouse the anger he knew was boiling inside of Amon’s chest at this very moment, but, Amon held up his hand to silence him before he spoke, he wiped the silent tears he had been weeping, his eyes now showed a cold expression. Not wasting a moment as he turned around and headed back in the direction of the base,

Amon looked down at his hands, he let out a small sigh,” I can’t help but think about the days when we weren’t fighting one another”, he said, the thoughts of the days when he, Aluric, Yumi and the others would take on missions and quests from the guild or the royal family, spending most of their days traveling or exploring parts of the continent, those days seemed like forever ago to him. The memories continued to flood his mind as the trees turned into tall stilted blurs, as the three of them sped through the forest.

“Amon I’ve got a bad feeling about this attack on our base”, Yumi said once she realized Amon and bard had caught up to her,

“I know, if it’s grahm were in luck, he is just going to go with a straight forward attack and that explosion would likely be a person with some sort of Fire blessing, if its Aux however”, Amon said,

“then we have to pray to the gods that he decided to use normal means to attack us”, yumi said,

Back at the base

“GUYS WHERE’S POLARIS ?”, Aster shouted, he had turned part of the training area into sand, throwing on the building that was engulfed in flames, his eyes raced around the training area, the explosion had seemingly come from nowhere,

“HE’S BUSY FIGHTING OFF THOSE ASSHOLES”, Zack shouted back at Aster, ducking and dodging between the flurry of swords that were coming at him,

“WELL WE NEED HIM TO GET THESE FLAMES UNDER CONTROL”, Aster continued shouting, throwing another loose whip of sand onto the fire that began to engulf the front part of the building,

“I agree Polaris should be dealing with that, you need to patch that hole they made in the wall”, Zack said, his back up against Aster’s as he faced down three more soldiers, Aster spun around,

“what hole”, Aster said, looking at the wall a massive hole had been made at the bottom of it, and in poured soldiers clad in white and red armor, and behind them a large scorpion like creature with two massive pincers and sharp spike protruding from its back, the creature opened it’s maw to let out a terrible screech, like a thousand birds crying, Aster held his ears, A wet viscous fluid shot from it’s mouth landing close by to Aster and Zack. Aster didn’t have any time to react to the resulting explosion, it sent him flying half way across the training area and through one of the benches, he opened his eyes to see where he stood a large fiery trench had been made, and on the other side of it, Zack was pushing himself off of the ground, he picked up his battle axe once more hacking down another soldier that rushed him.

A familiar explosive sound rang out, it was Levant’s gunshot, Aster heard a thud land next to him, he looked on at one of the enemy soldiers with a scorching hot hole in their chest, looking pass the fresh corpse he saw Levant taking out a few more soldiers,

“pay attention to your surroundings Aster, we can’t have you dying on us now”, Levant said to him, dropping to one knee afterwards, Aster rushed over to Levant, he had an arrow running through his shoulder, “I could say the same to you”, Aster rebutted, pulling the arrow through his shoulder to get it out,

“close up that wound, the fight just started”, Aster said to levant summoning his hammer to him,

“don’t push yourself to much”, Aster continued to say, the sleeves of Levant’s jacket had been completely burnt off, his body had steam pouring off of it, his skin a pinkish reddish color, his breathing was heavily labored,

“while…..while these flames aren’t…….that hot……..it’s exhausting……..how much of it I have to take……..in”, Levant said, dropping back onto the ground, sitting there trying to catch his breath,

but as he did that a shadow appeared over head, he could see the tip of a sword bearing down on him where he sat,

SPLAT, blood flew everywhere, the sword he saw coming towards him, was now stuck in the ground at his feet, what he saw was a familiar black and blue blade, protruding from his assailants chest,

Barak withdrew his sword from the newly created corpse, ”take it easy Lev, you can’t be pushing yourself and then be to tired to defend yourself’, Barak said with much concern in his tone,

“okay that’s four of you, where’s Polaris ?” Brie asked, as she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere,

“where did you come from”, Aster asked, with a look of surprise on his face,

“made this little guy a while back”, she stated, pointing to the black cat emblem on the cloak she was wearing,

“makes me completely invisible”, she explained, a very proud look was plastered on her face,

“well to answer you’re question, I left him fighting the leader of this whole fiasco on top of the wall, said his name was Aux, or something”, Barak explained to the others,

“What, Aux is here”, Zack said, he dropped his battle axe off of his shoulders, when he heard what barak had said, his face turned pale, as his eyes narrowed, Another massive explosion rocked the base, this time destroying the entrance to the buildings from the training area,

“yeah why do you know him”, Brak asked,

zack looked down at the ground, the initial shock leaving his body, ”yeah, I know him, he is especially dangerous among Aluric’s four pillars, I’ll fully explain later but for now barak lets go and help Polaris he’ll need it”, Zack stated,

“okay that sounds great, but we have a few problems that we have to sort out, first off what the hell is that thing that is seemingly spitting explosive spit, second off, we just got trapped in here, and thirdly, a giant white snake just slid it’s way over the wall”, Aster said, as the rest of the group huddled around him,

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“The scorpion like creature is a Boulder quill, as you can see it spits explosions, they live under the black spine”, Zack said,

“the black what….okay that doesn’t help, do they have any weaknesses”, Aster said,

“yeah fire, and before you say it I know it’s ironic”, Zack replied, “wait did you say a snake is in here”,

“yup”, Aster said, the entirety of the group looked over to the wall of the training area only to be met with a vicious white serpent, it wore a large black collar, and was currently fending off attacks from some of the rebels,

“that collar”, brie said, “they have a beast tamer or someone with a similar natural blessing close by”,

“okay great, new plan, Zack and Barak go help Pol, Lev I know your tired but use all of those flames you absorbed and charcoal that quill, I’ll go and defeat the over grown reptile and then clear those boulders at the entrance so that we can retreat with our lives in tact and brie you find the beast tamer and take them out”, Aster said, the others looked on at him in silence, “what are we waiting for lets go”, he took off drawing back his hammer to attack the giant snake. The others followed his lead towards their own tasks,

back in the forest

Amon and Yumi, were sprinting at full speed through the forest, jumping, ducking and dodging, over roots, low hanging branches and trees, in the forest shrouded in darkness, along the way they would ever so often run into trees that were either cut down or seemed like they just exploded, they knew this was the handy work of Bard, he pulled ahead of them to clear a direct path to the base, and because of the nature of her powers, yumi was also slightly ahead of amon. They finally made it to where they could start to see the base, as the edge of the forest approached, but with the next step, Amon felt the entire ground shake, as if a massive bomb had been set off,

When he looked up he saw Bard launching himself over the wall completely, and as his view panned down following Bard’s decent over the wall, he saw that that the base building was set ablaze and they were multiple people on top of the wall fighting,

“Yumi, were too late”, Amon uttered, as he approached the Base’s wall, but she didn’t hear him, or actually it was like she wasn’t focused on him at all, she had noticed the large hole in the wall with soldiers charging through, she made her way clearing out all the enemies in her path, Amon now in full fight or flight mode did the same,

Amon hadn’t realized it though ,that above him was Polaris , Zack and barak, fighting off Aux and his men. Polaris had been fighting this opponent for a while now, even with the help from barak and Zack he had been getting quite annoyed at the accuracy that his opponent displayed,

“Pol, let me and zack take over, you need to go help put out the fire Asap”, barak, said to Polaris, as Polaris went in for another attack against his opponent,

But, Barak grabbed him by the neck of his jacket, throwing him back while propelling himself forward, seeing this Aux readied his knives, Barak, bring down the full weight of his body behind his sword strike, Sparks flew as the blades connected,

“why should I go and put out the fire, let Aster and Lev handle it”, Polaris shouted, Another explosion shook the entirety of the base as if it were trying to rock it off of the mountain,

“they were, but they’re occupied with other things right now”, Barak said, taking his eyes from his opponent for the briefest of seconds to glance at Polaris, Aux seized the moment of distraction, pushing Barak off of him, he jumped back throwing two dark knives at Barak, he had barely managed to block one, but the other caught him in his thigh, Barak faltered as he landed, when a cut appeared above his right eye,

“what the “, barak blurted out,

“be careful with this one, he’s an assassin”, Amon shouted, unsheathing his sword and jumping into the fray. Yumi made her way through the last of the soldiers in her path, bashing the last one’s head against a broken piece of the wall, she set her sights on Levant who was fighting off the Boulder quill, Narrowly avoiding it’s explosive spit, she looked down at her hand, the purple gem in Keagan’s gauntlet was still intact, she remembered Keagan telling her he would have to trade them out often because they broke under the stress of him using his natural blessing, but that they would also store a portion of it saving him about two attacks, Yumi smiled to herself,

“thanks a lot Keagan”, putting the gauntlet on her hand, she jumped into the battle grabbing the boulder quill by it’s tail, she hefted and pulled with every ounce of strength she could muster, her small arms wrapped around the hard exoskeleton, a ripping sound came from the base of the creatures tail, she pulled on it even harder now ripping it off, the creature squealed and bucked in pain, it thrashed about turning around to face yumi, the creatures back was rounded and dome shaped, like an armored shell, which caught yumi by surprised by what it did next, the boulder quill jumped turning itself into a ball and charged at yumi, she jumped out of the way barely dodging it, but by the time she was up on her feet the boulder quill was descending on her again, she quickly rose to he feet planting them into the ground firmly, pushing her hands out in front of her body bracing for the hefty impact, one of the spikes pierced her bare hand, she bit her lip to hold in her scream. She held the creatures full weight , she could here the low growls and screeches it was making trying to unfurl it self and break free, pushing with all of her might she launched the boulder quill into the air.

“it’s coming your way Levant, burn it”, Yumi shouted as one of the kinetic pulses charged up into the gauntlet, yumi punched forward sending the wave of her attack towards the creature.

“BLOOD MOON BULLETS: LAST ROUND”, Levant shouted charging a blast in both of his guns, he fired the shot, piercing straight through the armored shell of the boulder quill, the intense light of Levant’s attack brightened the whole area briefly as though it were day. Bard landed with a thunderous sound, cleaving one of the arms off a soldier,

“I hope you all are ready to die”, Bard said looking down on the soldiers, who all stepped back in fear, “nice landing, big guy but your help would be much appreciated over this way”, Aster said, raising another earthen wall to block the whip like tail of the snake. Bard looked back at Aster and his face grew pale, he looked as though he would vomit on the spot,

“I’m fine”, bard said, Aster looked on with confusion, the serpent barreled through the wall that Aster made,

“don’t tell me, you’re afraid of snakes aren’t you”, Aster said, landing next to Bard,

“yeah, so I think you got this, in exchange I’ll handle all the soldiers here so they don’t get in your way, Bard said rushing off in the other direction. Aster studied his opponent carefully, it was the first time he had come across such a large snake, Aster jumped back again avoiding the tail of the snake, he glanced to his left, a glint catching his eye, but what he saw was the large fanged mouth of the snake heading straight for him, stomping his foot, a spiked pillar shot from the ground, which the serpent avoided, Aster grit his teeth, this snake was reading his moves, summoning a large pillar beneath his feet it carried him high into the air trying to give himself the height advantage, the snake reacted to this to, slithering up the earthen pillar to attack Aster, he jumped off falling to the ground but the snake followed him launching itself off of the pillar, Aster tried to react but he locked eyes with the snake and couldn’t move. Zack found himself cleaving an enemy soldier in two with his battle axe, he had been separated from Amon, Barak and Polaris who were all fending off Aux’s men and Aux himself. Behind the soldier he had felled he saw Aster about to be eaten, running to the edge of the wall, Zack launched himself off of it swinging his battle axe as hard as he could, striking one of the eyes of the snake, the heavy weight of his blow pushed the serpent’s large body away from aster, breaking through the large pillar of earth as it crashed into the ground.

Aster landed on the ground, tumbling back to the wall, he slammed into it hard, however he didn’t give his brain time to catch up to the pain his body felt, springing to his feet he rushed over to the snake, it laid there on the ground, it’s movements made sluggish from Zack’s attack, the black handle of his axe stuck to the side of the serpent’s face, Zack himself was slumped against the wall, the blue armor he wore on one of his arms, was shattered to pieces, Aster knelt down to him, he raised his head by the chin, thankfully he groaned in pain, pain was good he was still alive, the snake had roused once more, lazily shaking it's head, it set it’s sight on Aster once more, the snake dove forward only to find it’s movements stopped, Aster had formed a catchment of sorts around the snakes body, pinning the serpent to the ground,

“SERPENT’S FOLLY”, aster said, raising his war hammer high above his head, he began to ascend in the air, a platform of earth rising into a pillar, the face of his hammer, warped itself into a large spike, raining down a singular blow, striking the snake dead.

“well would you look at that both of them are dead”, Aux said, throwing a small circular object into the air, which promptly exploded into a large bright cloud of green smoke, with the sight of that you could hear the sounds of battle slowly die out as the assailants, retreated back through the wall,

“well it was fun, I’ll see you guys soon”, Aux said, following his subordinates back into the darkness of the forest.