If he had only thought to do this from the beginning, he might have been able to use the full number of his Dominated targets to brace the walls. As it was, he only had four more minions. The two mutated spiders high up on the walls, a final Morbolger, and the Disara.
There was still roughly a hundred-foot-long section of unprotected wall. And while the defenders had concentrated there… so had the enemy. Even with so much firepower in such a small area, the tide of monsters was unending.
As a series of fiery dragons leaped out from the wall, streaming across the gap, Hal could see that the walls were not going to hold much longer. Every attack, no matter how brief, chipped away at the wall’s bHP.
Hal had to brace them. He summoned the spiders back from their perches, hurrying them along to guide the lone Morbolger through the thick of the battle.
With their venomous bites and sticky webbing, the spiders made a clearing around the Morbolger. It lasted all of a minute, still halfway to his destination one of the spiders was dragged away and obliterated by numerous fangs and claws.
Using his Disara, Hal rushed it to the Morbolger’s side. Though it couldn’t blink about the battlefield, it was still a powerful creature on its own. It leaped up on the back of a great purple worm that erupted from the ground near the Morbolger.
The Disara siphoned its lifeforce, reinvigorating the catlike creature. Hal felt something shift in the air, some subtle balance tipping in his favor. He looked back through the eyes of the Disara and watched as dragons made of fire struck a group of slowly approaching Mud Golems.
It looked like they were an honor guard for… something. Something that looked like a cross between a slug and a sunflower, if a slug walked on numerous little legs.
As the oozing, muddy bodies of the Mud Golems were flash-baked, Hal felt the presence in the air shift once more. Like a veil pulled away, Hal could feel his Disara had access to its blink ability once more.
Something about those creatures felt wrong, but Hal couldn’t put his finger on it. The Disara blinked and appeared atop the Morbolger, who in turn snared the spider with a vine.
The trio blinked and appeared at the base of the wall. Hal’s Morbolger immediately began to dig in its vines while the Disara and spider burrowed into adjacent segments of wall that looked worse for wear.
He could hear Durvin’s voice loud above the roar of beasts, “Ye leave the ones with the glowin’ marks alone or it’ll be yer hide! I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but protect the durned monsters!”
Leaping off the wall, Durvin rushed around to the back of the Morbolger near the center-most wall and began to swing his greataxe with wild abandon. Swirling cutting wind rolled off the sharp gleaming blades as he cut a swath of destruction before him.
He was soon joined by several other dwarves, each of them with a rope tied about their middle trailing to a group of battered and bandaged dwarves on the wall.
As soon as the Morbolger began to Crystallize, Durvin and his crew tugged on their ropes. They were yanked out of harm’s way, all but Durvin. A scything claw had cut his rope when he wasn’t looking, leaving him down among the pressing horde of monsters with no way up.
The last thing Hal saw before darkness consumed him as his last two minions Crystallized upon their respective walls, was a bright flash and a wave of intense heat.
With the use of her new vision, Ashera saw Durvin’s fall. She saw the horde collapse upon him moments before they did it.
She could get to him, but it would expose her to more than just Elora. The Wildsmaster stood at her side, looking worried but resolute. No judgment.
A flaming dragon rushed out from one of the barbarians up on the wall. Ashera looked at the roaring fire with her black eyes, inky tears streaming down her stained cheeks.
Her hand snapped out, covered in gore and the black blood of her enemies. Diabolic Seal flashed over the spell. Black lines of corruption rippled along its length and it became a part of her.
Ashera stole it. There was no other word for it. She took hold of the magic and redirected it to Durvin’s attackers.
The barbarian that had cast the spell looked curiously at what just happened. The dragon streaked to the side at a sharp ninety-degree angle and dove at the nearest group of hideous plantoid beasts.
A blinding blaze of fire erupted as the creatures were incinerated, buying Ashera enough time to reach Durvin. A dark shimmering tether appeared between Ashera and the barbarian that had cast the spell.
He doubled over in pain as the backlash of Diabolic Seal reached him. He would know exactly what had happened. There it was. Her secret was out. Ashera shoved the man from her thoughts. Elora ran ahead of her, she reached Durvin first.
The dwarf was spitting mad, parts of his beard were aflame and his suit of armor was blackened. But he was alive.
Ashera grabbed one of the ropes from a nearby dwarf. The man nearly dropped his length of it and fell over as he saw her black eyes and the pulsing veins that etched across her face.
But dwarves were made of sterner stuff, and with a nervous nod, he fed her more of the rope so she could aid in Durvin’s rescue. None of them would last long down there.
Just as Ashera was about to leap down, a tiny bead of light drifted out toward her. She regarded it curiously at first, then a pall of dread fell over her as she realized it wasn’t just an ember or a trick of the light.
Dropping the rope, Ashera put all of her Occult-infused strength into a leap toward the floating mote of orange-red light. She could feel the power rolling off it. She could reach it.
I can’t let it detonate.
Ashera soared through the air on a direct collision course with the devastating spell. She cast Diabolic Seal once more, attempting to steal and redirect the foul magic.
A force unlike anything she had ever felt resisted her subversion, it fought like a vicious, rabid animal. Her HP began to dive, wounds appeared all over her ruined armor. Blood flowed freely and the inky black tears became a steady flow of darkness from her eyes.
You will not take my home from me!
Ashera channeled her deepest, darkest thoughts at that moment, pulling out the memory that wounded her most of all.
She held tightly onto it, letting it fuel her Occult Magic. The resisting force receded, Ashera hung in the air five feet from the bead of fiery destructive magic. Her outstretched gauntlet began to glow red-hot with unimaginable heat. The metal started to ripple and distort, she ignored the pain and pressed on.
Held aloft by the tidal forces of her own Occult Magic and that of the presence behind the Shiverglades’ assault, Ashera smiled. She was winning. For once her pained memories were useful.
But her victory was short-lived.
She realized what was going on too late, and ripped the spell in half, shunting the portion she had assumed control of into the distance. The rest of the spell detonated, washing out everything in white, and Ashera knew no more.
163
In one violent flash of light, everything changed.
The wall vaporized. Bodies were thrown back as if the world itself had bucked them free. Their defenses were breached, anybody who wasn’t lucky enough to be thrown back from the blast likely shared the same fate as the wall.
Ashera had saved the lives of many, but even her newfound strength had its limits. She was lost to the blinding white, as were many other friends and allies.
With a groan, Elora shook the dazed sensation from her head. A strong hand reached out and lifted her to her feet. Elora looked, aghast, into Elaise’s blood-streaked face. The barbarian had one eye swollen shut and a dislocated arm hanging at the wrong angle.
“Up,” she commanded. “We must hold longer.” She pointed with her massive greatsword with a single arm at the eastern ridge. The sky beyond was just starting to lighten to deep purple.
Elora pushed away from the barbarian looking at the chaos that reigned around her.
The blast had blown her back dozens of fe
et. She had been lucky it seemed. Several still forms littered the ground beside broken shelters and shattered palisade spikes.
One form, in particular, held her attention.
Ignoring Elaise’s shout, Elora ran toward Ashera. Her leg gave out after three steps with a stomach-churning wave of agony. Looking down, Elora saw a white bone sticking out from her leather armor.
She nearly swooned at the sight and the blood beside but she forced herself up once more with Elaise’s help. With the barbarian’s sword sheathed, she looped an arm around Elora and steadied her. “We must secure the wall!” Elaise said, though she continued to help Elora toward Ashera’s fallen form.
“I can’t leave her,” Elora said, her heart in her throat.
Ashera wasn’t moving.
All of the strength seemed to bleed out of the Wildsmaster at the bloodied sight. Her heart froze between one beat and the next.
Though Elora would have never conjured her willingly into such a dangerous situation, Komachi sensed her distress. Her utter turmoil. Komachi materialized on the churned-up field beside Ashera’s body.
Tears streaming down her filthy, bloodied cheeks, Elora turned wide blue-gray eyes toward Komachi. “Help her,” she begged. “Please!”
The trembling little pobul, so deeply in tune with Elora’s emotions took one forlorn look at Ashera, then at the other still forms around. More than just Ashera suffered from that blast.
A red-bearded dwarf, limbs twisted awkwardly, lay nearby. A once-beautiful treasure chest, now broken and battered, its lid lying askew not far from the dwarf.
Komachi keened, her tiny heart breaking.
She was terrified. Absolutely and utterly afraid of the monsters that poured forth from the break in the wall. Luda was there, the small form of the young woman creating a shield to push back the tide but it was an impossible task.
The monsters reacted to the pobul’s cries. Her keening whipped them into a frenzy, unlike anything Elora had seen before. Whatever malicious intent that guided them was buried beneath the weight of their primal savagery.
Elora realized what a horrible mistake she made. The pobul continued to keen with loss and fear at the bodies around her. She was supposed to be her protector, and she had let her come out in the middle of a slaughter.
Komachi’s dark brown fur began to glow and Elora noticed out of the corner of her eye that every single one of Komachi’s considerably bulked up stats were draining at an astonishing rate.
The monsters were halfway to their position when Elaise stood up, recognizing the threat, and loosed her greatsword with one arm. The monsters that slipped past Luda’s shining barrier of moonlight were met with the unbridled fury of a barbarian who would not let them harm a single hair on Komachi’s head.
Elaise roared. The ground shook.
A buff rippled out from her position to everybody nearby.
You gain the effect of Tribal Bloodlust.
-25% Damage Taken.
+1.5% Damage dealt per enemy slain.
Duration: 5 minutes.
Elora looked from Elaise back to Komachi. Her fur was almost golden and glowing. She lifted her tail straight up like a flagpole and a burst of prismatic light fell over the battlefield.
Between one blink and the next, Elora felt her consciousness slip through her grasp like water.
Elaise lifted [Angurvadal] and cleaved a slithering beast down the middle. Its two halves split and curled as she began to channel mana into the symbols on her blade.
Stabbing her greatsword into the soft earth, the barbarian fell to one knee and grasped the leather-wrapped grip of her sword. She concentrated, bringing the dregs of her mana to bear.
She would never let a pobul be harmed while she yet drew breath. The already chill air crystallized around her, growing even colder. A flash of prismatic light washed over her, bumping her HP up 10% but otherwise doing little for her serious wounds.
Elaise focused on the cold air, pulling it in. Feeling it all around her, the barbarian rose unsteadily to her feet. Releasing her faithful blade, she brought her fist up to her mouth and curled her index finger away from the fist.
Pressing her lips against the small gap provided, she channeled her mana and the frigid cold all around her.
The air temperature around Elaise dropped tens of degrees each second. Diamond dust flitted about her, glittering in the fitful light of that miniature sun so far away now, or perhaps it was just diminished.
With one deep breath, Elaise drew every drop of cold into her lungs. It burned and ached, but she continued to draw it all in until her lungs were fit to burst.
As the monsters rushed through the widening gap in the walls, Elaise let loose her magic. Ice Veil: Bitter Winter rushed out in a cone of impossible cold.
Every monster that its frigid wind touched, was instantly frozen to the core. The ground turned slick and hard, reflecting the light around them like a mirror.
Elaise kept breathing out, emptying her lungs of the pain and cold. Dozens of monsters were frozen, clogging up the ragged hole in the wall. The Shadesblight took control of the monsters once more, which could only mean that Komachi had stopped keening.
The barbarian was only dimly aware of that fact, though. She didn’t have the luxury to check on the little one or the young Wildsmaster. Long after her breath should have been spent, Elaise continued to emit a cone of freezing cold.
It reached all the way to the wall, glazing it in a foot-thick layer of shining ice. Consciousness began to fade, darkness closed in around her, and still, she summoned the Bitter Winter to do her bidding.
Spent, Elaise released the spell. That was all she had left to give, and she noted with more than a little pride that the monsters had considerably thinned thanks to her spell.
Your Veil Magic has risen to Level 32.
+1.25% Veil damage (+40%).
+1.25% Veil effect duration (+40%).
+1.25% Veil casting speed (+40%).
But as she looked around, gathering her strength once more, she noticed something worse.
Elora was gone. Komachi was gone. At least a dozen people were just… gone. Ashera, Durvin, Vorax, and several others were no longer where she remembered them.
Without the Wildsmaster in her party, she couldn’t check on her. Nor could she take much time to ponder the oddity. Several of her scouts were wounded but not out of the fight.
She called them to her side and waded in beside the small girl sustaining the barrier of magic. The horde of monsters battered at it, denting that shield of light and conjuring bruises across the young one’s delicate frame.
The girl’s lip split and blood began to trickle down the side of her grimace as Elaise stepped up beside her. She remembered then that her name was Luda. She had never seen her do anything like this before.
How many powerful friends do you have, Hal? she pondered. And even with all their strength arrayed against a single enemy, the Shadesblight had seized the advantage.
As it always would.
Her Ultimate filling up, Elaise waded into the horde of monsters. Summoning forth a burst of magic from her enchanted greatsword, [Angurvadal], Elaise pushed back the monsters, staggering them for a moment.
A moment was all she needed.
Unlike most Ultimates, Elaise’s was special. There was no using [Angurvadal] for this. She had to use old-fashioned hand seals, and with her arm dislocated it was going to hurt.
Growling through the pain, Elaise formed the hand seals necessary to channel and bring forth her Ultimate. Her fingers were slow, the monsters recovered with every hand seal until she thought she had severely misjudged her own ability.
But of course, she hadn’t.
She was the Warleader’s sister, after all. She completed the final seal, fingers interlaced in a complex weave as power flowed through her.
Elaise uses Ultimate: Dark Mirror.
All around the barbarian, shadowy images of herself appeared. Each of them drew their own bla
de and howled with enough combined fury that even the monsters gave pause. It appeared as if a small army of Elaises had suddenly come to the barbarian’s call.
They rushed the stunned monsters, cheering and lifting their many voices into a powerful battle cry.
164
Mira sat cross-legged with Hal’s head in her lap. Her hands wove intricate shapes above his forehead, wringing out a brand of magic that had no business being on Aldim.
She could just barely see him there in the sea of shimmering glyphs that assaulted him like bolts of lightning. Gritting her teeth, she pushed harder against the barrier between her magic and Aldim’s Worldshard.
Just a little more, a trickle is all I need, dude, she thought to herself, straining.
Back home the magic she was performing would have been child’s play for her. She was an accomplished Magi after all, well into her studies. But being on another Worldshard had its limitations. Especially if one was trying to be covert.
There was a rush of incredible heat, the ground shook, and even with her eyes closed, the brilliance of some blast outside painted red across her vision. Shouts and screams filled the air but Mira tuned them out.
Noth was still there, kneeling by Hal’s side. “Go,” Mira told the woman. “Your mana is mixing up with his. I thought it was helping at first, but it’s just static to me now. Besides, it seems like the others need your help more than Hal does.”
The other woman waited, and Mira could practically see the woman’s doubting expression. Finally, she relented and stood. There was a swish of fabric as she left the tent.
Far enough from the wall their makeshift tent still stood against whatever had happened. Mira sighed and opened her eyes.
A rather tiny koblin stood sentry at the tent flap watching her curiously. She’d rather not have an audience, but she could tell the little one wasn’t about to leave just because she asked.
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