Chapter Four Hundred And Thirty Two – 432
Stone Shaping!
Dusty-brown Mana screamed from Felix's channels and slammed into the earth, spreading rapidly in a liquid deluge that did nothing to budge the strange monstrosities below him. What did affect them was when he claimed the very stone beneath their feet within the steel vice of his Will, and heaved.
Stone Shaping is level 81!
The entire roadway lifted at an angle, pressed upward so fast the fish-men were hurtled from their feet...and straight off the cliffs. Gurgling screeches punctured the sudden quiet, the storm above him gone still, while bursts of razor-sharp winds tore apart those creatures he'd missed. Below his scaled feet, Vess and that Faun girl fought dozens of the fish-men, deftly avoiding their jagged claws but starting to flag against the relentless onslaught. He could...feel it, their weariness, even without activating his Voracious Eye. That he used on the monsters.
Fathom Hatchlings? Felix clenched his jaw. They were a problem for the Nagafolk, not here. How did theythe flooding, he realized with a sour wash of disgust. Because I flooded the entire flipping desert. Shit.
The Fathom, a threat that had endangered one of his sworn peoplesthe Nagawere supposed to be in the Ghreldan Hills beyond the Stormeater Mountains. Not climbing the walls of Ahkestria.
Clawed, bony hands scrabbled over the low wall at the city's edge. More Hatchlings were coming, and fast according to his Perception. Felix's senses snaked over the lip of the city and beheld over a hundred of the loathsome creatures scuttling up the stone cliffs like spiders.
"No more!" Felix lifted his arm and sent more of his Mana rushing outward through the rain. Dusty-brown hit the edge of the city, turning the blasted and scored stone into tumultuous terrain. The wall and cliff itself, for twenty feet below, tore apart into shifting, liquid sands that fell apart beneath the Hatchlings' claws. Many dropped, shrieking, into the sea. He did not get kill notifications for them, but that didn't matter. His goal was to keep them out of the city.
Yet Felix's Perception informed him that more were spreading into the streets, at least two dozen. He reached out with his Affinity, touching upon their Spirits for a moment to figure out their goaland he immediately recoiled in horror. The Hatchlings were bundles of rabid bloodlust and a cold, alien madness. That small glimpse of their emotions was enough for him; Felix could tell what they wanted, and it curdled his stomach and stoked his rage.
They just wanted to kill.
He gathered himself, but before Felix could reach for his magic, a wave of aquamarine light coursed around the nearest corner and into the path of the creatures. His Shadows, headed by Zara, discharged from the wave of Mana and straight into a charge. Lightning flashed and acidic Mana gathered along sword edges and blunt weaponry, all of which descended upon the Hatchlings without hesitation. The Shadows were weaker than the Fathom spawn, but it was clear they had kept up with their training. Strike after strike hit the Hatchlings, driving them back and seizing the momentum of the fight.
To his other side, Vess and Fiammetta rallied alongside a number of men and women in an unfamiliar uniform. Regardless, they were drawing and loosing black arrows with remarkable Dexterity, drowning the Hatchlings in a volley of projectiles.
"Go! We have this!" Pit shouted from the air beside him, just before unleashing another Dawn's Advent. The huge, glowing crescent of power scythed through more monstrosities before burying itself into the street. "Go! Stop them!"
A few more Fathom spawn had managed to avoid his Stone Shaped obstacles, cresting the wall when Felix finally relented. "None of you are welcome," he said, and a basso rumble shook his words. "This is my city."
Adamant Discord!
His strangest Skill grasped at the connections between him and the monsters, represented by gossamer threads of light that only Felix could see. Intent and Willpower wove together, gripping the oddly dense connections and pulling them taut. Lightning snaked along the invisible threads, a consequence of Felix's manipulation, squeezing even more fearful cries out of the Hatchlings.
Adamant Discord is level 81!
Felix threw himself forward, weakening his own connections to the air around him and wrenching on the stone below, letting his immense body weight send him careening over the city's edge. All around the lip of the skydock, bars of crackling blue-white lightning snapped into existence, and the gurgling cries reached a panicked crescendo. Felix fell, and he dragged all of the monsters with him.
So many! Felix's eyes widened as he dropped, free-falling from on high and witnessing the absolute enormity of the Fathom swarm. He had sensed a hundred or so before, but there were over a thousand of the loathsome spawn, most clinging to the sea-slicked stone of the city plateau and more crawling out of the crashing waves with every second. Felix flared Adamant Discord, snatching his metaphysical link to those closestperhaps fifty or sixtywith his woven Willpower and Intent, tethering himself to those still climbing with wrist-thick cables of lightning. He jerked to a sudden stop, his own weight and momentum not enough...until he focused on the sea.
He reached.
The Skill latched onto the distant water, and a bond wider than the horizon and brighter than the sun briefly and intensely blazed. Blinding lightning wreathed him and all of the Hatchlings, until Felix felt like he had frozen in time and space. With a rippling shockwave of force, the inertia burst, and Felix rocketed downward so fast he saw a cloud of compressing air appear and shatter before him. Felix hit the water, and above him, every single Hatchling was torn in his wake.
He knifed through the water, not so much a sinking stone as a sharp blade, thrust with violent intent. Bolts of radiant electricity arced in all directions, the murky, dark waters illuminated by the captive monstrosities. Felix hit bottom, his clawed feet finding purchase in the sandy floor hundreds of feet below, while all around him a tree of barbed light collapsed. The Hatchlings smashed into the sea floor just as he did, but with none of the grace or fortitudethey pulped, bursting like overripe fruit.
You Have Killed A Fathom Hatchling (x648!)
XP Earned!
Others piled atop the first arrivals, cushioned by the gruesome pile of their brethren, and survived. The lightning of his Skill winked out, plunging the sea into stygian darkness. Felix's Manasight picked things out easily, however, the deep blue currents, rigid dusty brown floor, and noxious rainbow hue of the Hatchlings moving as if painted by vaporous light. His Perception enveloped them all, those that fled and those that charged him with mindless, mad bloodlust.
Rimeshaping!
All around him, the sea crackled, frozen by the immensity of Felix's power. Mana surged from him, claiming the water as his own and multiplying the potency of his ice shaping SkillFelix thrust outward, in all directions. Thin, rapier-like blades of hardened ice spiked into monster after monster, reaping lives as easily as breathing. A hundred, two hundred, more.
MORE, his Hunger roared. MORE!
The Fathom spawn died at his hand, every single one, until the murky waters were awash in ichor and rapidly decomposing bits of fat, muscle, and bone.
You Have Killed A Fathom Hatchling (x419!)
XP Earned!
Sunken Ward!
A newer spell unfolded from his channels, enveloping Felix in a sheath of shimmering blue energy that let him drawn in a deep breath. The spell wasn't entirely necessary for him, as it protected folks from the cold and crushing pressure of deep water, but it also let him breathe underwater. And that was required for his next trick.
Chthonic Tribute!
Felix pulled in a titanic breath, sounding his Primordial Skill and commandeering every last bit of foul Fathom spawn for his own. All at once, the dire detritus turned to effervescent smoke and shimmering light before being drawn toward him en masse. Felix inhaled it all, sending the Essence hurtling into his core space, until his Divine Tree hung heavy with glittering power.
Sunken Ward is level 2!
Sunken Ward is level 3!
Rimeshaping is level 46!
...
Rimeshaping is level 49!
Only Felix remained in the deep dark. He turned, surveying the empty, frigid water all around him, almost hoping for another monstrosity to dare approach. Nothing survived, and Felix kicked off the sandy floor, speeding upward toward the surface once again. He emerged through a crashing wave, the vicious crest of which slammed him into the crystalline base of the city plateau.
"Oof!" he gasped, more surprised than actually injured. Quite the opposite, as his scales and claws had gouged furrows out of the glowing green-gold Mana crystals he'd fetched up on. They grew like hexagonal basalt, in pillars and branching clusters, all of them immensely thick and rising a dozen feet before changing to regular Tier III stone. Felix stood, bracing against the waves that tried to dislodge him again, and patted the crystal. "Thanks for the catch."
Much to his surprise, beneath his hand he found a jagged tear in the crystal. More than that: there were a set of uneven slashes, each of them ten or fifteen feet long and a foot wide. He held out his own talons, curling them into a claw and eyeballing them against the slashes. Something very big had done them. Something very, very big.
An explosion of fiery light shook the sky, pulling Felix's attention just in time for him to see the massive, smoking hulk of a Manaship careen downward from on high. It hurtled dangerously fast, trailing smoke and flames like a funeral pyre, but slowed just enough at the last second to splash down into the sea. Shouts from above chased after them, and his own heightened senses picked out the cause: the Paladins were making a break for it.
"I am not in the mood for this," Felix muttered. He let his Sunken Ward die out, banishing the light blue glow from his Body, and seized the sky.
"Row! Put your burnin' backs into it!" Captain Toah shouted over the crash of waves. "This sea is wild but by the light of the Pathless, we'll tame her! Row!"
Constructs of light Mana, shaped into rough, oar-shape, swept out of the holes in the Manaship's hull. With only a single man to an oar, they moved far faster than he had expected; the benefits of Journeyman Tier Strength, Captain Toah supposed. He tried not to look into the raging whitecaps all around him, or show how uneasy the relentless motion made his stomach. Flight aboard a Manaship was nothing like it, not unless you were fool enough to fly into a storm. Lightning cracked above them, its own form of relentless motion as the unceasing rain pummelled them. "Like the whole damn world is drowning," he muttered. "But not us. We'll be free of this place."
Ironically, they had only been able to escape thanks to those nightmarish monstrosities. When the wretched beasts had crawled upon the deck and stabbed him in the backhim!Captain Toah thought it had been the end. But the Pathless provided for him, as He always had, and his men rallied against the twisted fish. Yet the Lord In White had been thorough with His blessings, for the creatures had immediately set upon the city defenders, distracting them from the Paladins and their flight. When the Fiend had shown up, Captain Toah had almost died of terror even as his guts had boiled with rage; the beast that had destroyed all of his brothers and sisters stood upon the thin air and called down stone and lightning like...like a god.
Not a god! he chastised himself, before offering a silent apology to the Pathless. Not even a man. A monster.
When the Fiend took action, that had been the Captain's time to move. The other defenders were too preoccupied with the swarm to bother watching them, and he had his men sever the last of the mooring lines and disengage the inscribed dock-arm. With a brief prayer of guidance, they fell. It was only a god-given miracle that they had survived, that the Mana engine had ignited for even the briefest of moments. That had been enough for them to land the still-burning ship.
The waves pulled against him and the rudder as they road through the crest and trough of waves the size of hillocks. There were huge holes in the Manaship, the sails were tattered, and the Mana engine dead, but Captain Toah felt a smile tug at his lips. They had escaped the death trap of Ahkestria, and the influence of the wicked Fiend. All they had to do now was survive the journey into the Ghreldan Hills, where more of their people were waiting. There, they would finally be safe.
Lightning crashed around them, thunder and light appearing simultaneously and entirely too close. The ship dipped, sending massive gouts of foaming spray to either side of the gunwales. Captain Toah shielded his eyes and cursed. "Blasted Damnation! That bolt almost speared us all!"
"Believe me, Paladin. Had I wanted it to, it would have."
Captain Toah gasped and stumbled back. Before him, standing amidship as if he'd always been there, was a man. Other than his considerable height and wide shoulders, he looked entirely normal with shaggy black hair, sharp features, and a simple jacket and trousers. Yet his gloves arrested the captain's attention, strange and black and oddly...clawed.
"You," the captain said. His throat tried to tighten, but he shoves his words through it anyway. "You!"
"Me," he said, and his eyes burned with a cold, glacial light. His hands, tipped with talons, flexed and lightning danced among them. "You were not allowed to have this ship, Paladin. I didn't say you could leave."
"You don't command us, just as your pretty little doxie doesn't either!" Toah rallied his fears of this thing, shoving them behind the burning light of his clean, holy rage. "You're a charlatan and unworthy of the Authority you've stolen, Fiend. What have you done to the High Justiciar? What trickery have you pulled on this city?"
The Fiend sighed, and Toah detected a hint of weariness in it. Weakness. "Return this ship, and I promise I won't harm any of you. Stop all the violence and the weird, kinda racist hate speech and we can talk. Find peace."
Toah laughed. He couldn't help it. "Peace was a Path the gods took with them. All we have now, is Strength, and Strength does not bow down before false Authority!"
His Paladins, well trained to the last of them, struck. From all corners a deluge of radiance descended upon the Fiend, enveloping him in fire and hardened light so quickly and powerfully that the entire Manaship bucked and groaned. Captain Toah poured his own power into a crackling javelin of Divine light, a Skill taught him when he gained his mantle of leadership. A heavy burden and privilege, to smite those that would sully the world. He hurled it, and the upper decks detonated in a blaze to rival the wild tempest above them.
We got him! he crowed, but another javelin formed in his off hand. "Again! He's not dead yet!"
More and more Skills piled atop the Fiend, so much that Toah couldn't even see the man anymore. Yet unease grew, dwarfing his brief elation. There were no screams, no struggle. No System notification.
"Are you done?" The Fiend's voice was a basso thrum that resonated in the captain's chest, though it wasn't loud at all. Light and flames vanished from him all at once, sucked into his open maw as if he he were devouring their power. Sapphire eyes burned not like ice but like twin, distant stars, and the captain's gut went cold in certain dread. "My turn."
Toah bellowed and pulsed with panels of hardened light that settled over his frame. A suit of armor, forged in Divine light. "Come, then!"
Lightning flashed, and Toah stumbled, gripping his midsection in wide-eyed disbelief. A black claw gripped him, tore through him. Shattered motes of light Mana drifted around them, fallen stars drenched in gold that dazzled him. Then the claw vanished, and the captain fell onto the wet, heaving deck.
The lightsall of them, everywherewent out.
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