Halcyon Rising
Page 13
“To improvise,” I replied. “Heavily. Everyone, push!”
We heaved our siege tower along the dirt path that led from the secluded grove surrounding the portal arch. We stopped when we saw an enormous colony of light purple bunnies. They filled the clearing in front of the city’s only entrance, moving in short hops to mimic the rabbits they were shaped like. One false move on our part would detonate the motion-detecting familiars and blow a crater into the earth that might swallow half of Valleyvale with it.
That would be one way to destroy the three wooden towers that held lilac energems at their peaks, but not the right way.
The two stone towers built into the city’s defensive wall stood on either side of the solid metal doors that formed the entry gate. Each tower had three archers inside. They slumped against the towers’ stone windows, looking exhausted, and afraid, but not cursed. Kāya must have needed some fighters to keep their wits about them, though I wondered how she incentivized them to fight.
“There must be forty of those creatures,” Lily said.
“There were not this many anibombs here yesterday,” I said. “These rabbits are multiplying like… rabbits!”
As I spoke, one of the energems released its spell. A tendril of lavender magic reached toward the ground and formed another anibomb before the energem went dark, starting the process of gathering its internal energy and building another new explosive familiar. And another. And another.
A new type of creature emerged from behind one of the wooden towers. It pranced on two large feet, taking long bouncy strides around the clearing. It was like a lanky man with rabbit paws for hands, long floppy ears, and two buckteeth. It had the same smooth polish as the other familiars I had seen, but this creature was hot pink.
“Kāya has a dark purple familiar shaped like an obese bunny that sends people in unpredictable directions when it explodes,” I said. “That creature, however, is new.”
“Its eyes are crackling orbs of black energy the same way Duul’s generals have red eyes,” Nola said. “It’s a tier three familiar, already. How did Kāya get so much stronger than me so quickly?”
“This confirms that Brion is her head priest,” I said. “She can’t just skillmeister herself.”
“So how do we get closer?” Lily asked. “These anibombs explode when something near them moves.”
“Not something,” Mamba said.
“She’s right,” Cindra said. The slime woman sought the shelter of a large tree, leaning against the trunk and submerging herself in its shade. “That jackrabbit-headed prancer doesn’t set them off.”
“Can you use Heartstringer on him?” I asked. “There’s only a small chance you’ll convert him to our side, but it could be worth it.”
“Arrows,” Ambry said.
“You think arrows will set off the anibombs?” I asked.
She pointed toward the archery towers. In the time we stood hiding in the trees that lined the clearing’s edge, the archers had taken notice. They hadn’t fired on us, even though they had a decent shot and we were in no position to aim back. Something stayed their hands.
“So Heartstringer is out,” I said. Another energem was charging up. It was half its maximum brightness, but before long it would add another baddy to the fray. “Stalactice?”
“Giant ice spikes plunging from the sky aren’t less subtle than an arrow,” Lily said.
“Snakes, fire,” I said, “we have no way of attacking them they won’t sense.”
I’ll trade you, Nola said.
What do you have in mind?, I asked.
You can have my idea and take credit for it, but when we get home we need to decide how to change the future before you… die in a puddle of your own urine. To put it mildly.
“I know something you don’t know.” Savange’s voice was a gleeful whisper in my ear.
“What is it?” I asked.
Do you promise?, Nola asked. She didn’t realize I wasn’t talking to her.
“Your goddess is a clever one,” Savange said. “She keeps looking at her familiars, and Kāya’s familiars. They’re sculpted from the same medium.”
“We should send in the seraph guardians,” I said. Nola’s face dropped. Savange was right, I had taken the words out of Nola’s mouth. “Nola’s familiars are made from the same source: action energy. It’s why they don’t explode near each other. That’s our in.”
I guess my aura of clevery goodness gave you the same idea?, Nola said.
“Just play along,” Savange said. “What happens in the shadows is nobody’s business but ours. I pride myself on being the only secret I can keep, and I won’t be revealed so soon. There’s too much more of this world I want to see.”
I didn’t like keeping a secret from Nola. I wasn’t even sure how to, but she didn’t seem to pick up on Savange’s presence here.
“The guardians can get close to the anibombs,” I said. “We’re not sure how the hot pink jackrabbit—“
“The rabbijack!” Nola said. “Sorry, I really do enjoy naming familiars.”
“Okay,” I said. “We don’t know how the rabbijack will react to a guardian, but we need to deal with this area now, before we try leading a stream of refugees through the front gates. Let’s send one seraph in and see what happens.”
Nola tapped one of her seraph guardians on the back and it ran forward, holding its thin golden spear across its chest. The bird-beaked creature caught the rabbijack’s attention from afar. The rabbijack leapt toward him in long strides, but the guardian stopped at the edge of the anibomb colony and took up its defensive stance, showing no fear at all.
The rabbijack bent down to stare at the guardian from several feet away, then it began… dancing. The bright pink creature bent its knees and shook its rear, holding its oversized paws in fists by its chest. A round knob at the base of its back, where a rabbit’s tail would have been, glowed with neon light. Then it punched.
Both arms thrust forward at once, but the attacker wasn’t close enough to connect. Instead, a column of pink smoke shot from its fists. The guardian just stood his ground, allowing that smoke to envelop it. Green droplets formed instantly on its skin as the rabbijack returned to its awkward dance.
“Poison smoke,” Nola said.
“Why doesn’t ours fight back?” I asked.
“I’ve tried teaching them,” Nola said. “They don’t listen to me.”
The rabbijack punched another torrent of smoke forward. This time, the yellow guardian’s arms started flapping like a flightless bird.
“I assume you didn’t teach them the funky chick-hen?” I asked.
“The rabbijack is doing this,” Nola said. We all peered through the trees. “It’s not just poison, it’s inflicting other ailments. Random ones.”
The rabbijack issued one last punch. The pink smoke washed over Nola’s familiar, then wafted upward to form the shape of a skull over its head. It was doomed. Its pale yellow body tipped backward, hit the dirt, and spilled the golden contents of its life force. Kāya’s familiar turned back toward the towers on its long legs and retreated.
“That was painful,” I said.
“Literally,” Nola said. “When a familiar dies, I feel its life leave its body. These little seraphs are connected to me. They’re not just disposable.”
I stepped toward one of the remaining familiars and stared at its face. “I know you can do more than take a beating. We need you to try your best. Maybe you’ll let me build your skills before you go out there?”
I peered at the creature, but it didn’t peer back. It couldn’t, on account of not having eyes. Try as I might, I couldn’t open a menu for it. “It’s the same problem I had with animals,” I said. “They can’t give permission.”
“Well why not?” Nola asked. “I want them to, and they’re my familiars after all.”
Then it happened. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the guardian’s polished, yellow face. I hadn’t stopped trying to crack open the secret menu that a
llowed me to trade experience points for power. The moment Nola made clear her intention that I improve her familiars, a skill menu appeared.
Unlike the skill menu of people, gods, and demigods, this familiar’s menu had very little skill description. Its attributes were all at their base level of one. Its combat class was “Polearm,” but the only skills to unlock were “Attack” and “Block.” Its special class was “Tier One Familiar,” and no special skills appeared there. I used Skiller Instinct, hoping to find something this guardian could look forward to.
Δ
Skiller Instinct Preview: Familiar: Tier One
Locked. Cast 1. Cast this familiar’s signature special skill. [10 AP to cast] [Requires: Hardiness 6] [375 XP to unlock].
∇
I unlocked Attack, then improved Strength once before its paltry supply of XP ran out. It would be a while before this little guy could block an attack, let alone cast his “signature skill.”
“I did what I could,” I said. “I don’t know why it took giving your permission first to let me into the skill menu. I skillmeistered one of Duul’s generals before, no permission required. Attack, Block, and Cast were its only skills too, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was still pretty new.”
“Or maybe you had Duul’s permission all along,” Nola said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why would Duul let me see inside one of his general’s menus?”
Nola shrugged. I supposed it didn’t really matter now. We had a handful of guardians to skill up and send into battle.
I stepped toward the next guardian and opened its menu, but this one didn’t have any XP to spend. As I glanced through its stats and attributes, I saw something odd. It was already at Strength 2 with Attack open, just like the one I had already worked on. I checked the other guardians too, and they had all improved the same way.
Then it dawned on me.
“Skilling one familiar makes them all improve,” I said.
“Which means skilling Duul’s general,” Nola said, “made all of them stronger. Including the one inside Valleyvale.”
“Yes,” I said. “It also means you can’t train some to have super Strength and give the others higher Constitution or Vivacity. They all progress together, identically.
“Let’s send two more in to see what we can learn about the rabbijack,” I continued. “If there are more inside the city, this is our best chance to gather intel.”
Nola tapped her guardians on the back and two more stepped out. Kāya’s familiar lost no time bounding up to them and shaking its ass, summoning a who-knows-what dance-attack of miserable afflictions.
The first guardian absorbed an attack that caused its body to break out in sores that oozed a clear liquid. The second guardian went into a seizure.
The diseased guardian stood upright, holding its weapon but not using it. I couldn’t watch this anymore.
I grabbed one of the two familiars we held back and looked into its smooth round face. “When the world hands you spears, you make stabby stabby. Come on! Wave it around like you mean business! Show me you can do something worth doing before we send you into this fight.”
I pointed my spear at its belly and jabbed in the air a few times to illustrate the action I wanted it to learn. It held its own weapon horizontally in both hands in the same unyielding position as the other guardians. Slowly, it pointed its spear toward me and began to mimic my action.
“Arden!” Nola said. “Look!”
One of the guardians facing off with the rabbijack made a feeble attempt to stab the oversized familiar. The second guardian, back on its feet after its seizure ended, did the same.
“It’s working,” Nola said. “They didn’t just need Attack open, they needed to know what to do with it.”
The rabbijack jumped sideways to avoid an attack, then punched back. The guardian it hit with smoke began to disintegrate before our eyes.
The diseased seraph familiar, still oozing something watery from its sores, lunged forward and stabbed its weapon into the rabbijack’s body. The rabbijack stopped dancing for a moment and screeched, then punched back, washing the guardian in pink smoke that left it glowing softly blue.
“Its sores are closing up,” I said. “The effects aren’t all ailments! The rabbijack just healed one of our guys. When it Casts its signature skill, the effects are just totally random, including good ones!”
Then the rabbijack bent forward for an Attack and bit the guardian in the neck. A thick torrent of golden lifeblood seeped from the wound and the familiar fell dead. Its body vanished, leaving only a pool of its energy behind.
The rabbijack pranced back to the front gates.
“We have to take on the rabbijack ourselves,” Lily said. “If one of those random effects is an explosion, it will set off all the smaller bombs.”
“It’s a higher level familiar than the anibombs,” I said. “Maybe it picks up on enemies at a wider radius. Mamba, can you send in a snake to lure the rabbijack away from the rest of the pack? Without getting close enough to set all of the others off? Then we can send in the seraph guardians to clear the anibombs while the rabbijack is distracted.”
“But the archers,” Lily said.
“Won’t shoot as long as they’re afraid of detonating all of those bombs at once,” I said.
Mamba closed her eyes and pressed her palms together, then began to dance. Hers wasn’t the juvenile shimmy of Kāya’s randomizer rabbit. The half-elf’s dance was slow and smooth, summoning a single snake from the forest and sending it gliding across the grass. It slowed when it approached the rabbijack, stalking carefully toward its prey.
Each inch brought it closer to the field of anibombs, oblivious to our presence as they took lazy hops near the wooden energem towers. Each inch threatened to trigger their explosive skill, for a combined blast we couldn’t calculate.
The rabbijack’s head whipped around as it picked up on the snake’s presence. The snake bolted away from Valleyvale while the rabbit-headed familiar followed behind in long, buoyant steps.
The chase was on.
+17
Mamba’s snake wove an arcing path away from Valleyvale’s front gates and the towers that pumped out anibombs. We jogged through the trees while the snake kept to the dirt path that led to the city. The rabbijack was so focused on its prey it didn’t notice us stalk through the forest alongside it while Nola sent her last two seraph guardians to defuse Kāya’s other familiars.
Once Mamba and I were a safe distance from the city’s gate, we jumped out from behind the trees and attacked.
The oversized rabbit skidded to a stop. It began to dance while I charged with my Vile Lance. At the last second, it punched forward, shooting me in the face with a puff of smoke. My attack missed its mark as I lost my footing.
Mamba kicked the rabbijack in the side while I tried and failed to spin around and strike again. My feet kicked at the ground, but only my toes scraped against it.
“Is this flight?” I asked.
“Not flight, waft,” Nola said, racing toward us with Cindra, Lily, and Ambry. She stepped in front of the rabbijack to shield the girls from another burst of pink smoke. It turned her feet to stone, rooting her in place.
The others sprang into action. Ambry conjured a ring of Holding Fire to trap the rabbijack while Lily brought ice down from the sky. Mamba’s snakes gathered at the fiend’s feet, and Cindra fired arrows into its bright pink body.
Mamba was the only one inside the perimeter of Ambry’s flame circle with the rabbijack, but the familiar’s magic didn’t seem to affect her. Instead, columns of smoke poured from the fiend’s fists and disabled everyone else while I drifted further from the ground, useless and out of reach.
“Everything’s spinning,” Lily said. She lost her balance, clutching her head as she toppled to the ground. Ambry started giggling, then doubled over in uncontrollable laughter. Cindra dropped her bow as her hands started to sprout flowers.
The petrification ailment crept from Nola’s feet toward her knees. She flapped her wings, but her legs had grown too heavy. She was stuck there, too far to stab at this creature with her short sword. This was Mamba’s show now. She cartwheeled away from one attack, then mounted her own with astonishing speed.
Her eyes were glowing the faintest shade of pink. Of course. She had been affected.
“Mamba!” I yelled. “You’re hasted. You got one of the good ones!”
“I’m too up tempo for this rotten rabbit,” she said. “He can’t catch my beat.”
“You have to finish him,” I said. “Once the haste wears off he might hit you with something else.”
“Then I think it’s time,” she said, “to jazz up these dancing shoes.”
I opened her skill menu and improved a few attributes to unlock Toehold, when another skill popped up. “It’s no Midge,” I said, “but how about we unlock Snake Coil while we’re at it?”
“Whatever you think is best,” she said, slamming the sole of her foot against the rabbijack’s face.
Δ
Skillmeister View of:
Mamba Oph
Base Attrib. / XP to Next / Intended Change / Cost
-
5 Constitution / 125 XP to Next / 5 –> 8 / Total XP Cost: 450
-
5 Vivacity +4 Bonus / 125 XP to Next / none / Total XP Cost: 0
-
8 Strength +3 Bonus / 200 XP to Next / 8 –> 12 / Total XP Cost: 950
-
8 Hardiness / 200 XP to Next / 8 –> 10 / Total XP Cost: 425
-
9 Focus / 225 XP to Next /9 –> 10 / Total XP Cost: 225
-
9 Resolve / 225 XP to Next / none / Total XP Cost: 0