Mira took out the [Gold Dragon Scale], focusing on it. She needed more juice.
The scale began to break apart into tiny motes of gold that flowed over her outstretched arm and into her chest. She felt the power swell within her like an ocean wave building strength in a storm.
“Yeah,” she said with a smirk. “That’ll do nicely.”
As the scale broke down completely, her entire body was limned in golden shimmering light like the sort of auras her masters had back home.
Eyes shut once more, Mira formed the esoteric symbols with her hands again. The power came to her readily then, parting the sea of glyphs binding Hal. There were so many things wrong with the man, she was surprised he still functioned.
“One thing at a time,” she muttered to herself, diving deeper into the black abyss at Hal’s heart. “You’re supposed to be the hero of this story, dude. I’m just visiting. This is supposed to be a vacation you jerk!”
Hal’s body twitched, black swirls of shadow flickered into being around his forearm and then vanished. That was a good sign as far as Mira was concerned.
“Okay,” she said. “Not a vacation exactly, but I’m supposed to be keeping a low profile! This is my training montage. Whatever is out there is your villain to beat up on, I got enough of my own back home. Get up already and save these people!”
With a surge of power, Mira parted the darkness in Hal’s mind. The glyphs fled before the strength of her will. She had used a good portion of the scale’s power, but she could see Hal’s consciousness begin to surface.
Hal’s body suddenly seized. His back arched like a bow under full draw. Mira murmured soothing words, part magic, part kindness to calm him. She admitted to herself that she likely used a bit too much power in that last attempt.
The koblin had come forward in surprise and fear, only backing off when Hal began to relax. Under Mira’s care, Hal eventually calmed and his breathing evened out.
He would wake in time, she couldn’t risk forcing it any more than she already did. Mira’s elven hearing picked up a sharp, pain-soaked keening. Her heart broke at Komachi’s suffering. Not long after, a shimmer of prismatic light shone through the threadbare cloth of the tent.
Mira gently set Hal’s head down on a pillow and slipped out from beneath his head. She got up and stretched out her lanky form. “Something real bad must’ve happened for Komachi to go berserk like that.”
With great effort - because she deeply loved Komachi, more than anybody could know - Mira dismissed the pobul from her mind. She was gone. Likely warped out to some extradimensional pocket where she’d be safe.
Not that much could permanently harm the furry little princess, but pain was pain.
Still glowing like an anime character, Mira strode over to the koblin that had resumed her role as a sentry at the tent flap. “Keep him safe, eh?”
The koblin gave a sharp salute. They’re getting better at that, she thought with a nod and smile.
It was time to wreck those sons of benches.
A glance at her Dragon Scale gauge showed it full with golden, shivering scales. Mira parted the tent flap and stepped out into the chaos with a savage grin on her fair features.
Most of the [Gold Dragon Scale’s] power had been used up she began to realize as she whipped out her polearm with a flourish. But it would be enough.
Mira had stayed out of anybody’s party purely out of necessity. There might be enough questions from Noth, she didn’t need a whole host of people asking why her stats glitched out while she was using magic from another Worldshard.
Noth had been a calculated risk. She cared enough for Hal that if he pulled through she might not care how Mira saved him from that strange debuff.
Mira’s HP rocketed up to 5,200, then dropped back down. It jumped again to 4,730, then returned to normal once more as the rules of the Worldshard tried to reckon her present strength with the strength she had briefly revealed.
A strength that was from another Worldshard entirely.
As her stats settled down, Mira waded into the iced-over hole that monsters were already breaking through. Dozens of copies of the barbarian woman that had guided them through the Shiverglades were there fighting like a… well, like a band of barbarians.
Mira Jumped and soared into the sky, she marked a few targets quickly and thrust out her beautiful new polearm. Its graceful pointed tip was wickedly sharp and ornately worked to resemble a dragon diving at its prey.
From up high she noticed something odd, a growing swirl of darkness at the far southern end of the gap.
To her unaided eyes, it almost looked like the monsters were running away from it rather than being sent into battle.
Using Crashing Meteor, Mira rocketed toward the ground ahead of the slew of barbarians that were breaking like a wave over the horde of monsters.
She picked out the biggest, meanest looking mother-florker and crashed into the rocky creature. Her polearm firmly impaled in its iron-hard skin, the explosive, fiery magic of her ability collided with the monster.
The Void Golem dropped back, toppling over as tiny explosions forced cracks of light to spread all over its hardened skin. Mira Jumped back into the air before it even knew it was dead.
She didn’t leap directly up, however. Instead, she leaped at a steep angle so she could line up her next strike into another of those strange creatures.
Mira had never seen a Void Golem before, and she didn’t really like the way they looked. Deep purple skin that seemed to suck in the light around it, the creature looked squishy and weak.
But without the power of the [Gold Dragon Scale], Mira’s strongest attacks would have failed to pierce its incredible armor. And even with the full strength of Crashing Meteor, her polearm had barely driven a few inches into the creature’s flesh.
Reversing her momentum with Crashing Meteor, Mira came down hard on another Void Golem. One that couldn’t have possibly seen its fellow go down. And yet, it moved to intercept her as if her trick was old and known.
What the flork?
Halfway through Crashing Meteor, Mira canceled the ability and changed up her tactics. Sweeping her polearm about, she summoned the strength of a dragon to aid her.
Dragon’s Bite formed a golden dragon’s head - which looked a bit like Orrittam’s head, Mira thought - that extended far beyond her thrusting polearm. As she came down on the Void Golem, the ethereal golden jaws of the dragon snapped upon the monster, biting deeply into its purple flesh.
The Void Golem thrashed about, but as the golden image of the dragon’s head held the monster in place, Mira’s thrusting polearm took it center mass. The tip of her polearm slid almost a full foot into the monster’s chest.
Strange, she thought, noting how much deeper that thrust went in.
Kicking off its misshapen lump of a face, Mira landed upon a pile of monster corpses. With her scales fully charged, this was almost unfair.
Almost, she thought. But not quite.
While she felled two stronger monsters, there were many more that flooded into the valley.
165
Mira let the power of the [Gold Dragon Scale] flood into her polearm as she cocked back her arm. “Time to thin the ranks a little,” she said to the monsters surrounding her.
Thrusting her weapon forward, she called upon Drakesbane. A golden dragon appeared, larger than life - larger than any dragon Mira had ever heard of. It rushed out like a twisting helix of golden scales, vicious raking claws, and biting gilded teeth.
Monsters scattered before the attack, but the creature almost had a will of its own. It rushed about, twisting and coiling to bite and snap a monster in half or rake its claws across a creature’s back to bring it low.
Wherever the golden dragon went, monsters died by the score.
A person dropped beside Mira, and she turned to them with a shirt-eating grin that fell as soon as she saw who it was. “Did you see that? Man I’m awesome-”
Standing beside her was a
man that might have once been handsome. She could just make out familiar angles of cheek and nose, but heavily scarred and partially obscured beneath the dark cowl the man wore.
But most striking of all was his eyes. Ruby red, and they were smoking. Mira’s jaw fell open as her mind was thrust back to Murkmire when Hal had turned into the Beast and thoroughly whooped all of them.
Well, I’m not half-dead like back then, she reasoned, gripping her polearm tightly. She still wasn’t sure whether or not this was Hal or something else.
The creature twisted toward her, its oily black cloak moved like a second skin. She noticed the fabric twisted strangely around the creature’s middle as if it had a hole there that was slowly pulling in its living robes.
Mira thrust with her polearm, swirling golden energy coiling around its length. With the ease of swatting a fly, the creature reached out with a black blade and swept Mira’s thrust aside.
Reacting faster than Mira had seen anybody move, he shoulder-rushed into her, throwing her back nearly a foot. She dug her boots into the soft earth, planting one boot against the corpse of a Rock Golem for good measure.
That hurt. What is this thing?
Before she could figure it out, the man rushed her again. It was all Mira could do to throw up her polearm before her.
That curved, black sword of his swept back and forth seeking a gap in her defense. But Mira was back on even footing now, she had a semblance of his skill and she wasn’t about to let him get the upper hand again.
Twisting and rolling her polearm at each of his cuts and thrusts, Mira managed to keep him at bay, but just barely. The monsters gave them both a wide berth, clearly afraid of the man. But that did nothing to stop them from assaulting her friends.
She had him at a standstill, but only so long as she was empowered with the [Gold Dragon Scale]. Eventually, its power would fade completely and she wouldn’t be able to hold back the man’s relentless hatred.
Mira could feel it rolling off him like a physical force. It assaulted her senses and reminded her more of a Shrike back home than anything that crawled out of Aldim’s lightless depths. She couldn’t see his name. Her prompts merely displayed question marks.
Then again her stats were still glitching, so maybe that was it.
A flash of pearly white teeth gleamed like moon-kissed daggers beneath the creature’s hood. It was all the warning Mira would get. Her white-knuckled grip on her polearm held it aloft to stifle the impossibly fast strike that fell from above and tried to cleave her in two.
Too late, she understood the feint for what it was.
While Mira had been fighting with both hands, the cloaked figure had been fighting with only a single blade. His other hand came out from the folds of his sleeve and thrust out under her defense.
A blast of frigid cold darkness hit her square in the chest. Mira was sent sailing through the air back toward the broken gap of the wall.
Her chest was on fire. Literally. Black flames licked at her scale mail, burning her and ignoring her frantic slaps to put them out.
The flames finally flickered out, dealing minimal damage to her HP but her armor looked like it was a hundred years old and had spent every year of that submerged in the depths of the ocean while Cthulhu used it as a dog toy.
Scales began to crumble and flake away.
Trying to right herself, Mira focused her innate Dragoon powers and Jumped, lifting herself higher and regaining some level of control over her momentum. She scanned the battlefield, spotting the newcomer.
Like a rage-filled beast, it attacked everything that came near. Black snaking tendrils of shadow lanced out of its robed sleeve and latched onto a nearby lizard monster the size of a minivan.
The creature squealed in pain and fright as the tendrils seemed to dive into the monster and… suction out its insides. What was left was a husk.
Mira took her eyes off the man for a second to choose a landing spot and when she looked back he was gone. She glanced around frantically, calling out to those below to be careful.
Which, she realized, was kind of obvious. The monsters weren’t dead, their numbers were diminished but there didn’t seem to be many of her friends who still had the strength to fight.
Everywhere around them was death. Mira landed lightly with the sort of grace that only a Dragoon could manage - and an elven one at that. She marched toward the gap, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Luda.
The barbarian’s copies were greatly diminished, every one that took some damage seemed to flicker and fade to nothing. But those that remained dogpiled on the remaining monsters with enough strength to hold back the tide.
Like the barbarian, they all battled with one injured arm, further selling the lie and making it harder to pick out the real one.
With Luda’s strange glowing shield helping to plug up the hole, they might be able to last until the dawn. Provided that hooded creature didn’t appear again. Mira anchored their line, such as it was, keeping the monsters constantly under pressure to stop them from running roughshod over each of them.
Luda’s barrier allowed Mira to unleash the last vestiges of her golden strength. She patted the younger girl’s shoulder. “Hey, you got room in your party?”
The younger girl turned an incredulous look Mira’s way. “You are not in a party? How is that- nevermind, yes,” she said through gritted teeth.
Luda invites you to her Party.
“Awesome, thanks. I’m going to take a quick look,” Mira said, pointing up to the slowly - too slowly for her tastes - lightening sky.
The red-haired girl gave her an understanding nod - the poor girl looked terrified - Mira Jumped high into the sky looking for that black-hooded thing that had hit her.
She spotted Noth to the side in her black armor, holding the western edge of the breach almost single-handedly. Even from so high up, Mira could see the rage the dark-haired woman was channeling. Every swipe of her obsidian scythe cut through fiend after fiend, but she never seemed to slow or tire.
When that hooded man first appeared, it had fallen beside her like an old friend. The last thing Mira wanted was for it to fall among the front line. The monsters might be scared of it, but she was experienced enough to know that would only make things worse for her friends.
Her experience with the Ghast back on her homeshard told her that a monster that was afraid was even more dangerous than one that was enraged.
She saw it again. More importantly, it saw her.
Mira felt its red piercing eyes hidden deep within that dark cowl stab into her heart as if it could suspend her in mid-air. The creature waded through the monsters, destroying or driving them before it.
Whatever semblance of organization the attack had quickly crumbled. The monsters were more focused on running away from the hooded figure. And that was never a good turn of events.
When Mira landed, she noted that the last of the barbarian’s copies were being protected by a line of other barbarians. Their line stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mira’s and the remnants of the defenders that could still stand. It would have warmed her heart to see people of different race and creed standing in common cause if that thing wasn’t making its way toward them.
Mira’s golden aura began to fade, and she realized she’d only have one shot at taking the monster out. With the last of her altered strength, Mira Jumped high into the sky.
She quickly marked the man by the way the monsters fled before him. He saw her again but this time he wasn’t content to just glare at her dramatically from far away.
His dark robes morphed and twisted into dripping, oily wings. He beat them once, twice, and on the third beat, a rolling brume of shadow fell away beneath him. Mira lost sight of him between one eye-blink and the next, only to catch his dark form level with her some fifty feet away.
Mira’s face twisted into a grimace as she snarled and gathered up the last of her golden energy to strike at the monster masquerading as a man.
166
“We have company, get up!” Besal’s voice was near to panic. He had never heard him like that before.
Struggling to his feet, Hal looked about the tent. A koblin jumped for joy at seeing him awake and ran away shouting it to the others. Golden lightning jumped between his fingers. He still had plenty of EXP, he could Dominate a new round of monsters.
Hal left the tent, scooping up [Emissary] as he went.
“Look to the sky,” Besal said, directing his attention to a dark figure flapping large bat-like wings in the distance. Not far from his own position, Mira was rising in the sky, golden energy coiling around her like a python.
Reaching out with Dominate, Hal lifted his left hand toward the creature.
Nothing happened.
Not only did it fail to work, but Hal couldn’t even feel the Kol’thil’s energy there anymore. Something was wrong.
He tried again, nothing. None of his Sigils worked.
“He sees us,” Besal said, a sense of trepidation in his voice.
Hal turned his attention back to the black form hanging in the sky. He was behind and level Mira, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Dragoon thought she was the target.
But Hal could feel something wrong with the creature, something familiar and disturbing all at once. Its attention was fully on Hal, like a hunter finally recognizing its prey, it let out an otherworldly howl.
Without further hesitation, Hal reached out to Besal. In the same moment, he Spliced aberration, shadow, and eldritch. With Besal’s Second Verse, shadowy black wings veined with red sprouted from his back.
He was aloft a moment later.
As he gained altitude, Hal could see how badly things had deteriorated. More than a few bodies were strewn on the ground. He couldn’t find Ashera, Elora, or many of the dwarves. And the wall was broken. Luckily, the parts he Crystallized were still holding but the breach was still over fifty feet wide.
Beastborne Page 91