Lord Sorcerer: Singularity Online: Book 3

by Kyle Johnson

  “You think they’ve got some kind of Spell that will protect them from the sun?” Meridian asked quietly. “If they do…”

  “If they do, then I think they’re going to lose,” Aranos smiled. “I’ll bet that I can disjoin that Spell, given enough time, no matter how powerful it is. If that’s the case, then we just have to hold for long enough for me to undo the Spell. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “Perhaps some form of artifact?” Geltheriel spoke up softly.

  “Or a creature,” McBane offered. When the others looked curiously at him, he shrugged. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? They’ve got some epic creature that they’re bringing from the city that will turn the tide in their favor, and they’re waiting for it.”

  “One would wonder why they did not use such a creature at the beginning, then,” Rhys offered with a smile. “From the sound of it, they could have defeated us easily, were that true.”

  “Maybe they didn’t think they needed it,” McBane shrugged. “Maybe it’s really rare and vulnerable, so they didn’t want to expose it if they didn’t have to. Hard to say, really, but my money’s on something like that.”

  Aranos nodded. “If the commander has an item that protects the undead from sunlight, that’s not the biggest deal. Sure, if we weren’t expecting it, we might exhaust ourselves or attempt a counterattack right as dawn hit and be surprised, but if that’s the case we’ll keep following the plan and we’ll be fine.

  “If there’s a creature, though, all we can do is try to kill it. Some of us might have to leave the tower for that, and it’ll be dangerous, but I’ve been prepping for it and we’ve been conserving ourselves for a long battle, anyway. If we can take it out, their assault will probably shatter, and we’ll win. Best we can do.”

  The party grumbled, but Aranos could see they agreed with him. Most of the grumbling was because they’d been hoping this would end with dawn, and now it would be dragging on.

  They returned to their watch and endured, while Aranos prepared and planned. He’d wondered if he could cast a high-cost Spell more slowly than normal by tricking SP into it over a longer time; as it turned out, not only could he cast it that way, he could Overchannel it. His Spells lay, waiting for him to add that last bit of SP that would activate them.

  As the sky grew lighter, Aranos was forced to revise his plans. The growing light revealed the mass of undead still lurking about them, hemming them in from every direction. The air above was filled with the rotting, gargoyle-like naktraps, and Aranos had already had to block the tower windows and staircases above with walls of crystal mana to keep the creatures from swooping in and falling on the party from above. He also had a few radiant walls tied down with Spell Anchors layered in front of the walls in the stairways; any creature that wanted to break through the crystal would have to endure being roasted as they did.

  Nevertheless, his Battlesense Skill told him that the undead weren’t just hanging about; they were staging, and how they set up told Aranos a lot about the commander’s likely plans. The front lines were filled with the smaller, faster, child-like undead, with the larger and stronger ravants standing behind them; while the smaller undead weren’t particularly dangerous, they were hard to damage with piercing attacks and would occupy the tanks effectively. They would also force the defenders to use magic to deal with the assault right at the outset, depleting a valuable resource. The ravants were slower but stronger and more dangerous; more importantly, they could probably strike over and around the smaller undead, meaning the defenders would have to deal with attacks from both types of creatures at once.

  The enemy commander had ranged support, as well. A large number of corpses wearing battered, rusted armor and carrying heavy shields surrounded a group of the void mages Aranos had dealt with before, doubtlessly protecting them from Aranos’ ranged Spells and Longfellow’s deadly crossbows. Aranos could probably take those defenders out with a couple of Ravaging Bursts, if he wanted to, but only if the commander had been foolish enough to station the shield-bearers outside of whatever magical barrier was surely protecting the casters. If Aranos had been the one setting this up, he’d have put the Warriors behind that barrier; that way, if Aranos fired any light blasts that would pierce an invisible barrier, they would probably dissipate on the shield wall. If Aranos wanted to do any real damage to the casters, he’d have to breach the barrier first, then the shield wall.

  The larger, rotting corpses were scattered throughout the lines of the ravants. They would doubtlessly close with the tower last, and even though they were too large to enter the waystation, wounding them would release the worm-like creatures that would swarm the defenders quickly. If the tanks focused on those, they would start taking damage from the child-like undead or the ravants. If they ignored the worms, the disgusting creatures would inflict their terrible, rotting wounds on the elves and humans. It was a sound plan, and had Aranos not been preparing for something like it, it might have allowed the undead to easily overcome the defenders, especially if the party was weakened or the undead strengthened somehow.

  The sky was growing steadily brighter, and in the waxing radiance, Aranos saw a trickle of what looked like muddy, brown water flowing from the ranks of the undead into a puddle in the center of the clearing surrounding the tower. As he looked more closely, though, he could see that both the stream and puddle were moving; the ‘liquid’ was twisting, writhing, and squirming as if it was filled with insects. No, not insects, he corrected as his heightened Perception revealed what he was seeing. Worms. Lots and lots of worms, all squirming into a pile. Aranos watched, repulsed, as the pile began to grow larger, the worms crawling over one another and twisting together into a six-foot diameter lump of flesh.

  “Yeah, not letting that happen,” he muttered, raising his hand and facing his palm toward the mound of twisting flesh. Four globes of fire roared from his palm, slamming into the mound and erupting in an explosion of flames that blasted a chunk of the worms free, scattering them around the pile. To the Sorcerer’s dismay, though, the remainder of the pile shuddered briefly, then began to grow once more with increasing speed. He launched more flaming missiles into the pile, blasting larger chunks of worms loose, but each blast caused the remaining worms to move faster and coagulate more quickly. After a moment, Aranos lowered his hand; the worms he’d blasted free were already rejoining the original pile, and all he’d done was lose some SP and make the thing grow faster.

  “That is completely nasty,” Longfellow spoke from beside him, shaking his head at the growing accumulation of writhing creatures. “It was a good try, but yeah, definitely want to stop with the fire. Seems to be making it worse, really.”

  “That’s what it looked like to me, too. Whatever those things are, they seem to like fire.” Aranos peered more carefully at the creatures, which had slowed their accumulation to a trickle once more. “Can you see what they’re doing?”

  “Looks like they’re making a column of nasty,” Longfellow shrugged. “Their little pile seems to be getting taller faster than it’s getting wider, at least. You think this is the thing McBane was talking about?”

  “Most likely,” Aranos nodded, glancing at the Archer. “I just hope it doesn’t explode and fling worms all over the place. Could you imagine being covered with those things? Having one land in your mouth?”

  “That was a terrible image to put in my head, and I’ve decided you’re an evil bastard,” Longfellow declared. “I’m never going to be able to unsee that!” Aranos laughed and turned back toward the growing column swaying and writhing in the middle of the clearing.

  As the sun finally cleared the tops of the trees, dusty shafts of light fell fully upon the clearing and the undead surrounding it. Most of the creatures wilted and seemed to visibly weaken beneath the sun’s gaze, but the pillar in the center shuddered, just as it had when Aranos’ fire struck it. As before, the squirming and writhing sped up, and the pillar swelled and grew…as the surrounding clearing suddenly dimme
d as if a heavy cloud had passed before the sun.

  “It’s sucking in the light,” Aranos realized slowly. “It’s using the sunlight to grow faster and larger and keeping it from hurting the undead!”

  “Explains why it wasn’t out all night, doesn’t it?” Longfellow snorted. “If all it’s doing is some accelerated sunbathing, though, that’s not such a big deal…” Longfellow halted and swore quietly. Aranos glanced at the Archer, puzzled, and the coffee-skinned man gestured out the window. “Look at the grass, mate.”

  Aranos stared at the grass surrounding the pillar; it took him a few moments to see what Longfellow was talking about. The grass was dry and waved gently in the wind – there wasn’t enough moisture in the air here for dew to have formed – but as Aranos watched, the blades closest to the worm-pillar began to wilt, drooping and sinking to the soil. The light wasn’t quite bright enough to tell, but Aranos had a feeling the stalks were yellowed and turning brown beneath his gaze.

  “It’s got a life drain Ability,” he said quietly, sending the message silently to Silma below. The fenrin would pass the information on to Rhys; the Druid and Shaman were only ones with a likely counter for whatever was happening. “That’s what they were waiting for. They don’t have to take the tower; they just have to keep us pinned down long enough for that to drain our LP.”

  “You got a plan for this, then?” Longfellow asked a bit nervously. “Not looking forward to trekking back here when the system shifts our respawn back to the High Road because this place’s not safe.”

  “Yeah, I do. I just need them to attack, first.” As they spoke, the ring of wilting grass spread outward through the Redeemed clearing, drawing closer to the tower by the second. As the sun rose higher, the pillar of worms grew – it was eight feet wide and fifteen feet high at this point – and the life-draining aura seemed to move ever-faster. As the ring finally crept into the tower, Aranos felt icy fingers crawling through him, reaching down inside him and drawing off his life force. A red notification popped into his vision, and he glanced at it quickly:

  You are affected by: Life Drain Aura

  Effect: Lose 1 LP per s while in the Aura

  Aranos watched as his LP bar began to slowly creep down, but he forced himself to ignore it. He could afford to lose the LP for a while, and he wanted the undead committed to their assault before their counterstrike began.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute after the Life Drain Aura swept through the tower, the front ranks of undead began to move forward. They came slowly and awkwardly at first, stumbling over one another, but as they spread out, their advance became a charge, and they raced across the Redeemed ground from all directions, heading for the tower. At first, Aranos thought that might have been a mistake – after all, the longer the enemy commander held off his assault, the more LP the party would lose before the attack even came – but after a moment, he realized that the attack was really just a distraction. Without the assault to protect it, the pillar of writhing flesh in the center was exposed and vulnerable, and if the party could destroy it somehow, the entire undead siege would fall apart. It was the real attack on them: their healers didn’t have limitless SP, after all, and if the worm-creature could drain life as long as the sun was in the sky, the party would eventually succumb to it.

  Aranos took a deep breath as the skirmishing line of child-like undead reached the tower. Those near the doorway swarmed toward it, finding their path halted by a wall of steel, but the rest leaped for the stone walls, using their incredible Agility to easily scale the sides of the tower. Before they could near the second-story window, though, the climbing creatures dropped, most missing fingers or toes, and Aranos grinned. His High Mastery manipulation of the tower walls had been useful after all, and the creatures had found that about ten feet up, the stone was as sheer as glass and riddled with razor-sharp edges that sliced through flesh and bone with ease.

  Still, more of the creatures were climbing, and Longfellow was busily running around the room, leaning out of windows and shooting blunt-headed bolts at the closest ones. His normal bolts would have slid right off the slimy flesh of the undead, but the blunt ones knocked them loose with ease. Aranos simply kept watch, conserving his SP, waiting until the second rank of ravants and giant corpses crossed the tree-line and entered the clearing.

  “Longfellow, downstairs!” he snapped, and obediently, the Archer grabbed his gear and hustled down the stairs as Aranos added the last few points of mana to the three Spells hanging over the clearing. Instantly, a dome of air snapped down over the area, 120’ in radius, trapping the bulk of the undead within. All three aspects of his Elemental Ward activated at once, and he used his Flight Spell to leap from the floor as a stone spear shot up beneath his feet and the blazing-white curtain of fire roared into life a few feet from him. Stinging clouds of acid ate at his Composite Armor, but Aranos had reinforced it well, and the few points of damage the acid scoured off it were of almost no consequence.

  The undead weren’t faring as well. The boosted Spell was doing hundreds of LP damage per second, spearing some creatures, roasting others, and dissolving more with clouds of acid. The child-like monsters seemed immune to the acid, but even their resistance to piercing didn’t help when the stone spears impaled them, and the fire seemed especially damaging to them. The ravants were being torn apart by the stone spikes thrusting from the earth, as were the huge corpses, and the worms that were released didn’t last long in the waves of fire and acidic mists.

  The casters, though, were unaffected, safe behind their barrier, and Aranos guessed that they were probably working frantically to disjoin his Spell. Together, they could probably do it, but he didn’t think they’d be able to before most of the attackers were slain. He knew that the creatures wouldn’t have much time, though, at least not once the second Spell swirled into being around the clearing.

  Tiny, glowing orbs of golden light erupted all over as his triple-strength Radiance of Life Spell burst into life. Rays of restorative mana shot across an area almost 200’ in radius, piercing the casters’ barrier with ease and draining 12 points from the Physical Stats of every undead on the field. The badly wounded among the creatures simply collapsed, their weakened necrotic cores unable to withstand the intensity of the Spell. The rest slowed instantly, their bodies visibly wilting as the Spell tore at their vital essences.

  The third Spell coalesced almost directly above the already-weakened casters. Thanks to Silma’s scouting, Aranos knew where this group was forming up, and his last Spell was targeted squarely at them. Nodules of flaming rock and shards of ice rained down upon the tattered barrier the creatures were holding, driven by the sudden vortices of wind rising along the shield. The antithetical mana types ripped at the magical protection, disrupting its weave and shredding it easily, allowing the full fury of the empowered Fire and Ice Spell to tear through the suddenly exposed casters. Aranos heard distant wails as the hapless undead tried to use their terrifying cries to protect themselves, but at that range, none of the party members would be affected.

  The pillar in the middle, though, still stood, unharmed. If anything, it had grown, which is what Aranos had frankly expected after seeing the results of his attacks on it. It towered overhead, now, and the notifications told him that the life draining effect had grown from 1 to 3 LP per second. Every time the radiant wall swept past the column, it writhed and twisted, growing taller and broader, and as it grew, apparently its Aura strengthened. At the rate it was increasing, the drain would become critical in a few minutes; killing that thing had to take top priority.

  Grimly, Aranos dismissed the remaining Elemental Ward before it could empower the worm tower too much and sent a silent message to Silma. A moment later, the silver wolf streaked from the tower and crashed into one of the towering ravants, easily bearing it to the ground. Saphielle rushed out behind the wolf, the elf’s shield crushing a feebly moving child undead while her prismatic spear slashed through the exposed heart of a
ravant. Aranos smiled; the battlefield had been cleared enough for the party to counterattack and to take the fight to the towering column of writhing flesh.

  Aranos zipped out of the window as his party rushed to attack the battered remnants of the undead horde. His focus was on the life-draining pillar that twisted and writhed about; if they couldn’t destroy that, he would have to order a retreat to save the elves’ lives, if nothing else. He swooped past the tower, his gorge rising slightly as he neared the column of snarled worms. In close, he could see that each, tiny worm had a human-like face, and that each body ended in a pair of barbed pincers. That was how the creatures were holding together: each worm sank its pincers into the skin of another, linking them all into one massive, interconnected tower. The sight wasn’t what disgusted him, though; the worms reeked of feces, bile, and rot, and this close the stench was nearly overpowering.

  He held out his hand and summoned air and water mana; if the worms loved fire, he’d give them ice. Globes of crystalline ice streaked from his hand and slammed into the creature, bursting and sending worms flying. The tower shifted and leaned precariously, but more worms rapidly swarmed to fill the gap his attack had made, leaving the pillar unharmed. He swore silently as he zipped past; the thing seemed immune to ice, as well. I’m gonna have to try every type of energy I can until…

  A movement in the corner of his eye pulled his focus to his surroundings, and Aranos barely managed to dodge as a pair of gray-skinned, bat-winged naktraps swooped through the space he had just been occupying. Closer in, he could see that the naktraps had wings in place of arms; more precisely, it looked like they had long, spindly arms with membranous wings that stretched from their elongated fingertips to their hips. Their legs were equally thin but powerfully muscled, ending in overlarge talons the color of gray stone. Aranos fired a pair of Composite Bullets at the pair, not bothering to alter the bullets, striking each in the center of their human-like foreheads. They opened their mouths as if to shriek silently before they dropped from the sky.