Chapter Two Hundred And Ninety Seven - 297
Pit wheeled across the clear night, air Mana surging to assist his ever movement, yet the Arcid kept pace. It was half as large as himcloser to Human sized than anythingand its wings were but stumps of metal lattice poking from its back, yet it too flew with preternatural grace. It seized upon flows of air Mana, whirling it about itself in a manner that acted both as shield and a source of lift.
He knew it was a shield, because the Frost Spears he kept hurling at the Arcid were turned aside just before they'd impact. Each spear was met with a blade of compressed air, shattering some while the others slipped toward Pit's form. Wingblades of the creature's own, many missed, but a few tore bloody furrows in his flanks, while others deflected harmlessly off his barding.
Pit felt the flare of emotion and hardened Will, well before Felix's arrival. A flash of electricity and a sense of screaming connections hurled his Companion across the battlefield, an orb of dark acid sent flying as he passed. It too was caught up in the circulating shield and sent awry.
"You are both within my realm," the Arcid intoned. Its voice sounded like too much air pumped through empty pipes. "Foolish."
Pit's response was to flank and send more Frost Spears at the creature. The surprise angle caught it at least a little, and a single spear clanged off of its thick metal skin. Pit cried out in frustration, while Felix cut loose his Adamant Discord and dropped from on high. His hand snapped out, kindled with blue wispfire.
Sympathetic wispfire flickered and surged across the flying Arcid, but it failed to take hold. The failure didn't stop Felix. Pit didn't think anything ever could, not for long.
Still, a distraction would be useful.
Frost Spear!
Frost Spear!
Frost Spear!
While the Arcid dodged the forest of Frost Spears Pit unleashed, Felix shot upward on a bolt of lightning, blade and bone held in either hand. His body twisted, corkscrewing in a way Pit had shown him once or twice, and both weapons began to glow with a terrible, golden power. They hit, Felix and Arcid, and Mana burst in all directions. Pit had to shield himself with his wings, dropping him like a stone, before recovering enough to peer up.
The Arcid hung, its shield of air Mana sputtering and depleted, and a large chunk of its torso had been carved apart. Felix was dozens of strides beyond it, above it, twisting his body into a flip that reoriented him back downward. Lightning gathered across his shoulders, and his weapons led the way once more.
"SKREEEAAWWW!"
Arcid Number 55391 Is Stunned For 3 Seconds!
Cry is level 56!
Cry is level 57!
Cry is level 58!
Pit preened as the Arcid suddenly seized and fell from the sky. He hadn't expected his Cry to work, but the creature was hurt by Felix's terrible ability, channeled through his weapons. The one that damaged Skills.
"No you don't!" Felix shouted, and the lightning around him flashed. He dropped, like a spear from the heavens, blade and bone meeting metal spine. The Arcid let out a piercing scream, and Felix drove him into a tumbled roof sixty paces below.
You Have Killed Arcid Number 55391!
XP Earned!
You Have Gained A Level!
You Are Now Level 56!
Pit growled in frustration. He hadn't been able to destroy the enemy before Felix got involved. His magic had been too weak, too easily deflected.
He had to get stronger.
Pit circled down, eyes fixed on the punctured ruin Felix had landed upon. His friend seemed mostly unharmed, but Pit had grown cautious. He swept out his Perception, scanning the ground and sky for enemies as he descended. None were near them, but many were still assaulting the Tower or pouring into the deep hole their friends had made. Dangerous, all of them, in number if not in capability.
Friends!
The hole was widening, and a number of brilliant flashes of light came from deep within. Fire and ice and air and pillars of blue force. Pit could feel a tremolo in the Harmony all around him, a scratching, querulous note struck deep in that sinkhole.
And there was an answering cry from the west. In the mountains.
Felix!
Pit dove the rest of the way, tucking his wings for speed. He snapped them out just as he reached the dusty roof, and alighted with a heavy crunch. Felix! Enemy! It is coming!
For his part, Felix stood above the shattered Arcid and feasted. Ravenous Tithe pulled its entire form into dark smoke, this time even its metal shell, and all of it. It spiraled through his channels, and he split half of it between his stores and his hungry abyss. The dark space between his cores gobbled up the Essence rapidly, greedily, and wanted the rest he could tell. Felix refused.
I do not trust that thing inside you, Felix, Karys remarked. The blade in his hand still glowed slightly from the Mana and Skills he'd channeled through it.
"Yeah me either," he admitted.
It takes and takes, yet it gives nothing. What exactly does it do with the potency it has consumed?
He had no idea what the abyss was, and had in fact assumed it was some sort of black hole at the center of his little cosmos. Now it had a voice, of sorts, a will at least. Felix was calling it his Hunger now, that portion of the Maw that had sat heavily in his Mind and Spirit before. Now it was separate, sort of. Manageable, maybe. He'd give it what it wanted as long as it listened to him, as long as Felix saw no danger in it.
Who knew when that would change?
There was a heavy crunch above and a large shadow loomed over the hole he and the Arcid had made. Felix! Enemy! It is coming!
Felix's nostrils flared, and he jumped. The ruin collapsed beneath him, but he made the roof in time to jump again. Pit fed him a swift collection of sense memories, of what he'd seen from the air.
"Vess," he half-whispered.
Adamant Discord!
Felix hauled back on the connections around him, catapulting himself into the air in a sharp, parabolic arc. Pit vanished in a flash of light as he converged, coming along for the ride. The three of them hurtled first upward and then down, chased by lightning all the while.
The horde below them had turned to utter chaos. Where previously there had been an orderly madness to their attacks, now it was all out carnage. Ghostfire Simians fought Wretches, Wurms ate both the former, leaving only the Reforged to dully follow their former orders. Felix took in a dozen of the ice warriors still assaulting the Tower as it began to list to the side and had to fight down the powerful urge to do violence to them. Instead he focused on the sinkhole, where he sensed that his friends were even now.
He flashed across the sky with such swiftness that he barely had time to prep his Skills. Yet before Felix and Pit could land amid the horde, a large ring of sigils lit up the night. Fire and metal Mana stabbed upward, geysers of power, fueling an array that brightened from campfire to inferno in the space of an eyeblink. Felix shielded his eyes as he fell toward, just as the array burst outward, laterally across the bottom of the sinkhole.
Hundreds of monsters burned. Howls of pain and fear filled the dark, a terror that shook Felix's Affinity so hard it felt like a physical blow. Felix peered down, still falling, and saw an orange-colored shell of light surrounding his friends. And around them, devastation.
Adamant Discord!
Felix flared his Skill, dragging on those connections he could still sense among the char. As he struck the broken earth, he pushed, cratering the ground to the tune of thirty feet while all around him, the field was swept utterly clean. Lighting chased the enemies upward as they were launched directly into the air, stabbed and burned and crushed by the deadly force of his Transcendent Skill. Felix screamed with the pain of it, but he did not stop.
Ravenous Tithe!
Gripping their connections tight, Felix tore all of them apart. Hundreds turned to luminescent black smoke, and their Essence was ripped straight into Felix's channels. His store was quickly replenished, even with the tiny amount he allowed into his Hunger. The thing in his abyss roared in primal triumph.
Manifestation of the Coronach is level 47!
Among his friends, a golden glow proliferated, his Rallying Cry status affecting them. Felix leaped up, relying only on his physical stats, and landed a few feet shy of their fading shield. It flickered away moments later, and Felix got a better look at his allies.
"Atar, Alister, all of you," Felix gasped. They were a bloody mess. "Pit."
A flash of light had his Companion step out to help everyone to their feet. What quick tonics and potions they had were quaffed quickly, and Pit encouraged those hurt the most to climb atop him. That meant Atar, Nevia, and Kylar. The mage had spent himself too much on that inscription array, and from the way Harn was holding his head, the axe warrior had to put in some of his Mana as well.
Thankfully, the effect of his Rallying Cry meant their regenerations were all doubled. It would, hopefully, go a long way to healing the lot of them.
"Vess!" Felix finally saw her, leaning heavily against Evie. The both of them were covered in blood, but Vess' armor was punctured in several places along her arms, shoulders, and chest. Felix rushed to their side, but was terrified to jostle her wounds. "What happened?"
"Arcid was a beast," Evie grunted. "Hard to pin down, so this idiot decided to keep it in place by skewerin' herself!"
"It was...not entirely my choice," Vess said. Her Spirit was exhausted but victory sparked along its surface, all but hiding the deeper fears and worries. "Felix, isdid you succeed?" Vess asked with a strangled cough.
Felix only nodded. There'd be time later.
"We have to leave, now. The Archon is coming and I've no idea how soon he'll arrive," Felix looked at everyone else. "Can everyone move? Swiftly?"
"We will," Harn grunted. "Ain't got a choice, do we?"
Ifre and her Dawnguards had given the ruined city a wide berth. They had watched as the Fiend and his team ran headlong into its streets, dangerous as they were, and shook her head. No matter their orders, she wasn't bringing her men into the city. It was packed full of monsters, all of them beholden to that creature under the mountain.
No, Ifre instead circled the outer limits, keeping to the shadows all the while. She needn't have bothered. There arose such a cacophony in the city that no amount of stick-snapping and rock kicking by her small party would have alerted the beasts. Lights of fire and discharged Skills flashed deeper within, followed by the near-constant roar of monstrous voices. Once, Tyrk was certain he saw something flying above the clouds. Lightning he said, for all that it was a clear night.
Ifre silenced him with a glare. They kept moving.
Beyond the city now, the Captain of the Dawnguard waited with her men. It was not an ambush, though it felt that way, skulking as she was beneath the auspices of the Raven. The item at her side kept up its continuous pulse, active despite her fiercest wishes. It was a desperate move, devout as it may be, and the longer it went on the longer she felt more uncomfortable.
Now, seeing the shape of the Fiend resolve out of the darkness, after having clearly battled a city's worth of monstrosities, Ifre was reconsidering their course of action. This man and his team were not ones she wished to trifle with, no matter the justifications.
"Captain?" Isyk asked.
"Hold," she ordered. They were around a half league from the Fiend's team, and she could see them run at full speed up into the western mountains. They were avoiding the creature's citadel, thankfully, but that meant they were going over the peaks in far less hospitable places. Places she would have to follow.
"We maintain distance. I've no idea how much they can sense. Not any longer." Ifre looked back at the ruined city, now aflame. One of the massive towers had fallen, taking several others with it.
"How?" Tyrk asked, staring back at the burning ruins as well. "They slaughtered their way through that city."
"And paid the price for it," Ifre noted. She had seen a number of them were bloody and afflicted with a series of status conditions. "They are likely weaker now than ever before."
"Then...we strike?" Tyrk said, but his voice trembled with barely restrained unease.
"No," Ifre said with a frown. Tyrk jerked back from her expression. "That is not our task, Tyrk."
"Would it not make it easier to accomplish?" The unease in his voice resolved into something harder, if brittle. "They're dangerous, just as the Matriarch said. They do not deserve the Temple."
"We are not assassins, child," Ifre admonished with a gathering ire. "If that is the role you seek, then you have faltered in choosing the Dawnguard. Still your tongue before I cut it out."
Tyrk sank lower into the brush, but Ifre could only hope he'd taken her warning to heart. They were set a task, but she would not be responsible for the death of the man that saved her. That saved so many of her people.
"The Temple is beyond these mountains?" Isyk asked. Ifre breathed a sigh of relief at the offered change of subject.
"So it would seem," Ifre said. She climbed up from her belly and motioned to her men. "Come. Or else we'll lose them."
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