The building across the quad came crumbling down with concussive force from the Progenitor’s tail. Materials and shrapnel were sent flying outwards into the space. The building Mark was on had been spared this fate so far, but it was only a matter of time. Jonathan was dodging, diving, and blocking with everything he had. The Progenitor’s speed was not its only asset, its size and strength made it a titan to contend with.
Jonathan jumped out of the way of its tail for the fifth time since arriving nearby. He’d attempted to cut the Progenitor, but its skin was tougher than anything they had encountered so far, leaving only the shallowest of cuts across its body.
While that was happening, Sam continued to unleash destructive waves of magic towards the Crossbearer, and to clear the surrounding space of Corrupted, she had quickly found that bludgeoning the thing was much more effective than cutting motions. After their initial attack, four of the Crossbearer's six arms were incapacitated, and she protected the remaining two fiercely. Returning massive shards of crystal at Mark’s barrier.
The Crossbearer’s body was already covered in cracks that spanned her whole form. Sam’s continued attacks made from compressed balls of air were the main culprits. Chloe was scaling the Corrupted, stabbing her rapier into key points across its surface, and causing major damage.
Cara teleported around the thing, unloading shells to little effect, while Daphne attempted to draw the Crossbearer’s ire.
When spears would not work, the thing took to summoning crystal directly into their surroundings. The ground shook and sharp spikes pushed up out of the earth, in an attempt to skewer anyone around her. Everyone had to retreat to his shield or be riddled with holes. Mark could feel it when something similar to Mana attempted to bypass his barrier and affect the ground below them. He used his will to stop the strange energy from advancing, and the wave of the spikes halted at the perimeter of his shield.
In that small window, the Crossbearer stretched out her arms and began to draw in the surrounding crystal, or at least that's what it looked like. All around them, the crystals began to erode into pure energy. Gray clouds of power swam toward the Crossbearer, sumptuously, the cracks and chipped pieces of her skin began to reform.
Sam cursed and pulled a weighty rock into existence, sending it toward the Crossbearer’s head. By then, she had repaired two of her arms bringing her back up to four. A hovering disk of crystal expanded like a snowflake. Blocking Sam’s attack.
Daphne jumped forward, over the melting field of crystal, and under the large shield. She brought her gauntlets together and crashed into the hip of the creature. The Crossbearer let out another desperate cry of pain, and her mending halted at once. Even so, she still had four spears of crystal manifested in the blink of an eye, all pointed at Daphne.
Mark took the opportunity to surge his shield forward and bash it into the Crossbearer, knocking her off balance. At the same time, he blocked the incoming spears aimed at Daphne. Chloe responded to Mark’s maneuver by arriving behind the Crossbearer and running straight up its leg, stabbing her heel, her knee, and then the other side of her hip. Chloe and Daphne had positioned themselves on either side of the Crossbearer, holding on as she started to tip backward.
Unable to catch herself, the Crossbearer toppled backward, head striking the spire behind her with a thunderous crack. Her form fell against the surface, her gargantuan size working against her.
Neither Daphne nor Chloe missed the opportunity and made a mad dash for the Crossbearer's head. The impact had sent fissures all across the Crossbearer’s body, but it was focused around her neck. Daphne arrived first and unleashed a tremendous punch to the side of the creature's face. Cracks spiraled further from Daphne's point of contact. One last desperate scream issued from the Crossbearer’s throat before Chloe arrived, sinking her rapier into the beginning of the creature's jawline. It was not usually a deadly place to strike, but clearly, it was the weakest point, because the next second the Crossbearer’s head separated from her neck and rolled down her chest, crumbling into shimmering chunks.
Mark didn’t have time to celebrate because suddenly there was an enormous thundering crack from the quad next to him.
Jonathan had been fine when the Progenitor's full attention was on him, but it seemed that with each of the Crossbearer’s screams, the Progenitor had tried to turn back to protect her. This meant that to keep its attention on himself Jonathan had to keep taking more and more dangerous positions. When the last scream had gone up Jonathan was unable to garner its attention, so he’d attempted to block the creature.
Of course, given its size and speed, this was a tall order, in the end, all he managed was a slight delay, which cost him greatly. He was sent crashing through the building Mark was using as a lookout point, and yet the Progenitor’s power was so great that two walls of concrete were unable to stop him as he was sent hurling back toward the spire. Scarring the ground in an attempt to stop his momentum, Mark brought his barrier inwards and slowed Jonathan, healing what he could.
The Progenitor then came charging through the buildings, collapsing them as it went. At the same time, Mark lifted himself off the crumbling structure. From here he could see the surrounding Corrupted were beginning to close in around them, so he pushed them back again, their pounding against the perimeter was the least of Mark's worries right now.
The whole group turned to face the creature.
At first, Mark thought the situation was in their favor until he realized the system had not notified them of the death of a guardian.
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Mark's pupils narrowed to pinpricks and he turned his attention to where the Crossbearer’s corpse lay. It remained without a head, yet the spire behind it shone ominously, and then the Crossbearer's body shot up violently. It didn’t need a head to live? He couldn’t get his shield back in time.
It lunged for Chloe, who to her credit was already jumping out of the way, but the four spears that came from the extended arms left her no room to dodge. The barrier Mark had put around each of them was merely meant to block the crystal from making contact with their skin, it could take a decent amount of punishment if need be, but a full-out attack from a Guardian was just too much. The barrier deflected the first two, but the third and fourth overwhelmed the pane of force, stabbing into her shoulder and thigh. Chloe had still somehow managed to twist in midair to reduce the two life-threatening injuries to mere flesh wounds, and in any other situation, this would have been enough. But, those two grazes carried with them death.
Almost immediately the wounds began to froth and tiny shards of crystal formed from the wounds.
Chloe choked out a breath and using the last of her strength she bolted for Mark’s construct. Pretty soon she collapsed as the grow crystal sapped her lifeforce. Her one saving grace was that the spear had hit her right shoulder, buying Mark enough time to encompass her in his construct. If the wound had been nearer to her heart Mark would not have reached her in time.
He promptly examined her body and realized how apt Perry’s description of a plague this stuff was. It was closer to a virus, as the crystal spread, it drew in Chloe’s Mana and converted it into more crystal, propagating itself until the victim ran out of Mana.
The Progenitor charged and Jonathan attempted to block it along with Daphne's help. The Crossbearer began to send out more spears directed at Chloe as if sensing her weakness. Sam and Cara turned back the Guardian and unleashed a new series of attacks. Mark had already blocked the spears and he dove deeper into Chloe’s problem.
He could see that the more Mana a person had, the worse things were for them and Chloe, while a hybrid build had plenty of Mana. Ideally one should keep their Mana away from the feasting crystal to slow it down as much as possible, but there was another way.
Mark sent a message down the link to Chloe.
‘Listen to me, you need to bring your will to bear, I’m going to help you but you need to send your Mana at the crystal. Have it contain the growths by fighting it tooth and nail, do not give up.’
As hollow as it sounded, it was all he could say to get her to fight. The better option was to use her own will to block the growth, But one’s will was stronger when they brought their Mana into the equation.
Of course, this method had a huge downside. If he was right it would have an astronomical resource cost, one he would have to bear.
Mark didn’t hesitate though, he began to drain his [Animated Mind] dry, causing it to blink out of existence. Using that power he sent it and more through his resistance and into Chloe. The entire left side of her body was almost encased in crystal, and snaking its way up towards her neck.
Mark sent the power into her and encased the infection in a wall of power, pressing his strength up against the invading crystal shards. Its march halted only when Chloe managed to pull herself away from the pain of having one's flesh eaten alive. Mark used his Prana to encase her Mana and will, blocking the crystal from growing into her flesh.
The loss of power was all too apparent, but if he were to stop for even a moment the progress would continue. Mark could not separate her from the crystal, nor could he heal it as it was flesh turned inanimate, so there was only one solution left.
He sent a distressed message down the link.
‘Our only chance is that the crystal's effects stop when it dies! We need to kill the Crossbearer, now! ’
Sam acknowledged this and began to gather Mana, while Cara acted as the distraction. The headless Crossbearer kept attempting to heal herself using the surrounding crystal but they kept the creature off balance. The fact that it could still see what was going on around itself without a head was disturbing, especially when it dropped onto hands and charged at them, a set of arms throwing out spears as it went. Its speed was fast, and while they could keep up, they could not stop it when it charged toward the Progenitor. Mark warned Jonathan and Daphne and they both disengaged at the last moment.
Mark cursed when he saw the two Guardians meet up, things were about to get hard again. The Crossbearer hid behind the Progenitor and they were down one person. If they ran now Chloe was certain to die.
Jonathan sent his next move down the link, and put on a burst of speed with Daphne close on his heels. The Progenitor rose to defend again, only this time it did not charge forward, instead moving to obstruct them.
They arrived at the same time, only for Jonathan to use a skill and suddenly put on a huge burst of speed, dashing around the Progenitor.
With Daphne there, he would have made it, except in response to Jonathan's skill. The Progenitor's vile energy exploded out. Golden flames filled the space and black threads shot towards both of them. Daphne set her stance a bore the flames directly, while Jonathan had to cancel his speed skill and activate a defensive one. In that pause the black threat wrapped around both of them, locking them in place.
Sam cursed and shot a few icicles, even as she continued to build her large-scale spell. They melted in the flame before reaching the Progenitor. Cara could not get anywhere near the sweltering flames.
Mark pushed his barrier forward in an attempt to cover them and push back the flames, only he couldn’t, the flames continued to burn even as his barrier expanded unobstructed. Mark realized he could not stop this energy, however, the reverse of this was that it offered no resistance against him either. Realizing this, Mark did the next best thing, he out-healed it. Both Daphne and Jonathan’s bodies were tough, even now, in a fire that could vapourize ice, they remained with only first-degree burns to show for it. So covering them, he repaired the damage as it came. Power was flowing out of Mark in terrifying quantities now. Things were not looking good, they were fighting against the black threads, but neither looked like they could get free once they were entangled by the cords.
Mark was about to attempt something drastic when Sam sent it down the link.
She was ready.
All at once the space directly above their group was encompassed by shadow. From Mark’s viewpoint, he watched a cloud of darkness and ice building above their heads. The temperature dropped rapidly around them and snowflakes fell around them, those nearest to the flame melted before touching the ground. The temperature continued to fall, biting Mark’s exposed skin and making his breath visible as large plums of swirling steam. He watched as a bus-sized comet of ice formed and began to fall towards the Crossbearer along with enough hail to cover the street.