Chapter One Hundred and Forty Five - 145
With a second, terrible howl, the Larval Ravager let loose its minions. The Spawn went wild, and Felix could hear them scrabbling up the battlement steps, while the Revenants burst from their torpor and loped directly at them. In seconds, the monstrous humanoids were ascending the wall.
Closer now, Felix saw that their bodies were all bipedal and vaguely humanoid. Yet they appeared to vary depending on whatever Race they once were; stocky, small, thin, tall, otherwise, there were all kinds. But each of their heads were different, wild variations on some dire creator's monstrous vision. Fleshless skulls, lizard-like features, canine, and others he had no name for; all of them, however, were cursed with overlarge jaws and outsized fangs.
Felix felt his chest constrict as the beasts came at them, his instincts screaming at him to run. Yet his feet felt rooted to the floor, struck immobile by the horror that coursed through his veins. Some part of his mind knew something was wrong, aware of the Frightened Status Condition, but he couldn't do anything about it. Fear literally paralyzed him.
"Iron Rank!" Okar shouted, and Felix could see him grinding his teeth, forcing himself to speak. "Condition Ward! Lilian!"
Lilian was shaking, but she jerked at the shout as if woken from a nap. With unsteady hands, she traced out a curving shape in the air. Felix's Manasight showed him a dark purple Mana flood its confines, filling the shape with an ultraviolet light that speared outward and into all of them.
Status Condition: Frightened Has Been Dispelled!
The fear dropped away, cracking like a porcelain shell. Felix felt his mind immediately shift back into gear. He took a step back from the edge of the wall, shaken. The Larval Ravager was strong enough to put a whammy even on his own powerful Mind and Willpower. That wasn't encouraging at all.
Someone hurled a stone projectile through the air, and it shattered harmlessly against the Larval Ravager's hide. The thing didn't even seem to notice as it pulled itself slowly, inexorably closer. Felix turned and saw Okar pale and frowning at the at the creature, his breath like a bellows from his chest. "It's a Tier II."
"Everythin' can die. We'll just have ta do it up close," Harn grunted before turning to the rest of them. "Battle comes ta us! We have ta move, and we have ta fight. If I die, I'll do it with blood on my axes. Who're yer defensive specialists?"
"You said we wouldn't survive down there!" Dabney shouted.
"And now they're crawlin' up at us," Harn spat. "Ain't got much choice, anymore. Tell me quick: who's got walls?"
Lilian finished casting her Condition Ward for the second time, and the other Apprentice Tiers looked to finally shake the effects. Yvette nodded and Dabney raised a trembling hand.
"Good. Can ya make em portable yet?" Harn asked.
"The Iron Rank cannot, but I can," Yvette said, obviously still shaken by the Larval Ravager's fear effect. "I can summon and carry the wall with Steel Fortification, but I'll be unable to do much else. It takes too much focus and Mana."
"That's fine, we'll handle the offense," Harn gestured to himself and Okar. "We'll handle close and mid-range, while you four focus on ranged and crowd control."
Alister, Atar, Evie, and Vess all nodded and readied their weapons. In Alister's hands a thin rapier crackled with a familiar blue energy, while Atar unfolded his collapsible metal staff.
"Felix, you play go between, yeah? Shore up where needed." Harn gave him a look, and Felix nodded. He had more variety to his Skills than perhaps anyone else present, and a prodigious amount of Mana. Though Felix feared he'd wish for more before the end of the fight.
"Can we do anything about that?" Harn pointed to the Revenants climbing up the walls. They weren't very fast, but they'd be up soon enough.
"I got it," Felix said at the same time as Dabney.
"How about together?" Felix suggested.
"You think I'd need your help?" Dabney said with a sneer, having regained his bravado. He raised his hands and a dusty brown Mana coalesced in Felix's vision. He gripped his hands into fists and thrust them outward. "Fist of Stone!"
Literal fists of stone blasted from the wall, sized up about twenty times, bashing into some of climbing Revenants and hurling them off. The percussive sound of it dominated the air, rising above the howls below. Dabney grinned as sweat formed on his brow and cut off the Skill. His broad chest heaved for breath and the teen looked snidely at Felix.
"Oh, that's a cool Skill," Felix said, a bit of excitement at the idea of it. He figured he could make Stone Shaping mimic that, but had a better idea. "Let's try this though."
Stone Shaping!
He cast Stone Shaping, and as usual, he pushed the looping patterns of the spell outward, but his long familiarity let him do it near instantly. A wide section of the wall loosened as he gained control over it, and several Revenants fell when their grip disappeared. But many more simply kept moving, pushing through the softening stone with frantic movements. With a grunt and a chunk of his Mana, Felix pushed the section further down, claiming a swath nearly twenty feet wide by thirty feet high. Then he reached out.
And swallowed them whole.
The Revenants howled, but their cries became burbles and faded to nothing as the stone enveloped them. With another effort, he smoothed the section of wall until it was, he hoped, impossible to climb. His effort proved a success as one after another Revenant reached the expanse and slipped off. Felix stepped back and took a deep, steadying breath. His Mana had dwindled by nearly four hundred points during that effort, and he needed a few seconds to recover.
"What--How'd you do that?" Dabney asked, his face slack.
Felix shrugged and didn't answer, instead turning back to Harn. "That'll delay them for a bit."
"Good. Let's take the fight ta them. Okar, with me." Harn cracked his neck and started down the walkway, back toward the stairs. Felix could sense a wave of Spawn already heading their way, just beyond a drifting patch of black smoke. Harn, Yvette, and Okar rushed ahead, while Yvette summoned a glistening steel rampart nearly thirty feet long and six feet high. The conjuration hovered barely an inch off the ground, and though she wasn't touching it, the woman held her arms out as if bracing the wall.
"Time to fight," Evie said with some eagerness. "These Spawn ain't so bad, but I'm curious how the Revenants stand up."
"They seem strong, most aren't above level 40, but there is a strange potency to them that I cannot place," Vess said as they hustled forward. "Like a toothache..."
Felix nodded, but didn't add his thoughts to the mix. He knew what she was feeling: the Maw's presence, twisting the essence of the Revenants into whatever they had become. Moreover, they exuded a sense of wrongness that the Spawn or even the Knights had only briefly exhibited. The Maw's influence, felt so strongly throughout the Domain, was especially potent in them.
They gathered speed, and soon everyone was sprinting down the walkway. Felix checked his notifications while had the chance, letting the changes wash over him. A mental flex set them to appear during battle, hoping to take advantage of whatever power bump he could get.
Make An Entrance is level 19!
Blind Fighting is level 24!
Unarmed Mastery is level 31!
Corrosive Strike is level 31!
Shadow Whip is level 29!
Dodge is level 27!
Deep Mind is level 39!
Bastion of Will is level 46!
Energy flooded his core, sending ripples of power through his Body as his Skills leveled up. Felix felt a heady rush, but not from the System energy. No, it was the thrill of the fight, of proving himself against another. He didn't know how much he could improve against a sea of monsters, but he realized he was impatient to find out.
Unarmed Mastery is level 32!
Corrosive Strike is level 32!
Dodge is level 28!
The reserves within him, the essence he had absorbed within the Domain's Void barrier, were running low once more. He could feel it as an ache in his gut, a hollow that tore at him. The essence was his ticket to faster Skill gain, which meant survival. So he didn't hesitate as he ripped the jaw off of an injured Revenant, and took a deep, terrible breath.
Ravenous Tithe!
The creature burst into incandescent smoke. Far from being the normal black, it was a desaturated crimson, streaked with various rainbow hues and it was sucked into Felix's body in an instant. Immediately, a swirling cloud of essence formed above his core, one that he immediately put to work.
Cloudstep!
He rose up on platforms of crackling Mana, climbing higher than the steel wall. They had come to a near total stop, the pressure of the horde too much to simply force their way through. They blocked the way to the Larval Ravager, a meat wall. Harn, Okar, and Pit were at the front, fighting the ceaseless tide of malformed flesh. Yvette struggled to maintain the wall, and in a few places Felix could see the silvery Mana vapor was growing alarmingly thin. The Apprentice Tier fighters all were becoming more and more drained as the fight went on, and he suspected Dabney was reaching the end of his Mana pool. All of them were fighting battles to the sides, too preoccupied with surviving to focus their fire.
They were losing.
The Larval Ravager towered a hundred feet and a horde of enemies away. If they didn't make it through...Felix checked his Mana; he had enough to try and make a difference.
"Harn! I'm gonna try and open things up ahead of us!" Felix shouted and the man grunted. "Anyone who can help, focus fire on the front!"
"Get ready ta move, people!" Harn hollered at the rest of them.
Influence of the Wisp!
Stone Shaping!
Reign of Vellus!
Manawarped Revenants (x13) Are Enthralled For 5 Seconds!
Every single area of effect spell he had poured out onto the field. Wisplight flared around his body as one, four, a dozen Revenants fell under his Enthralling Will. He nearly smacked himself for not trying this earlier. Their bodies ignited like torches as they froze, and then the ground buckled beneath them, dropping slightly before a forest of spikes thrust upward. An area approximately twenty feet in diameter was affected, hitting far more than the ones he had Enthralled. Each spike stabbed and bruised the Revenants, some doing little damage, but the accumulation destroyed their footing and their momentum. Then, with a furious wave of azure lightning, he pressed them down, shoving their bodies into the earth like a massive hammer.
The spikes shattered, but so did many of the Revenants. The rest were suddenly immolated by a swirling firestorm that arose among them, along with shafts of blue-white force, fists of stone, and exploding silver spears.
Kill notifications flooded Felix, but he put them out of his mind, watching his depleting Mana. They rest had piled on, and it was working.
"Again!" Felix shouted, and poured out the rest of his Mana.
Influence of the Wisp!
Stone Shaping!
Reign of Vellus!
Manawarped Revenants (x9) Are Enthralled For 5 Seconds!
Just as his Voracious Eye indicated, the Revenants' had little Willpower. They were easy pickings for his Influence Skill. Each one hit with Influence of the Wisp died, regardless of the stone spikes and kinetic strike. The blue-white fire ate through them at a prodigious rate, dropping them before the Enthralled Status Condition lapsed.
More fire and force, earth and ice hit the same group, cutting them down even further. The Revenants stumbled, many of them broken if not dead.
Influence of the Wisp is level 28!
...
Influence of the Wisp is level 30!
Stone Shaping is level 29!
...
Stone Shaping is level 30!
Reign of Vellus is level 38!
With a grunt, Felix fell from the air, his Cloudstep dissipating once his Mana drained dry. Exhaustion gripped Felix for a moment and a massive headache stabbed at his head, neck and shoulders. He stumbled forward, trying to keep pace with the now-rapidly moving wall. He felt hands under his arms and looked up to see Vess holding him up.
"I have you, Felix," she said and smiled. Despite the gore on her face, it was a really good smile. In fact, as his regeneration started to rally and his Mana refilled, Felix was almost loath to pull away. But he did anyway. There was fighting to be done.
"I'm okay now," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "Thanks."
The wall shuddered as it pulverized the bodies ahead of them, while most were shunted to the sides by the 'V' shape of the steel fortification. Revenant's threw themselves at their wall, but now that they were moving fast again, the blows were glancing. Damaging, yes, but the team moved on. They were steadily getting closer to the Ravager.
We're gonna make it.
A trumpeting cry shook the air, literally vibrating it, and Felix clapped hands over his ears reflexively. But there was nothing that could stop the sound from piercing his Body and resounding within his Spirit and Mind. Rage and disdain filtered out from within his Bastion as the cry washed over it, strong enough now that Felix could almost mistake those emotions for his own. He looked up, and all of them saw the Larval Ravager had reared up and was affixing them with a single, baleful eye.
As one, the Revenants began to surge, shifting their positions around their island of battle while still throwing themselves against their diminishing steel wall. Felix looked around them gasped past the painful sound which still had not abated. "What's it doing?!"
Harn looked at them all and he gripped the hafts of his weapons tighter. "It's changing the field."
The area before Felix had filled in once again with bodies, while the flanks had depleted. Their path forward, toward the Larval Ravager was blocked once again and Felix could almost swear that it's rallying cry became repugnantly pleased near the end.
Okar cursed. "Pathless forfend, it's intelligent?"
