Chapter Two Hundred and Three - 203
The Revenants were thick in the streets, nearly choking them with their furious onslaught. Guilders fought, side by side, doing butchers work as they progressed slowly up the thoroughfare. Blood flew and the sizzle of arcane powers filled the air with the tangy scent of burnt flesh.
It was disgusting.
Turned Blade!
Purple Mana vapor poured from Lilian Knecht's outstretched fingers and into the two Guilders ahead of her. Their flagging defenses rallied beneath her spell, and the talons of the Revenants were turned aside. With a roar, they charged forward, clearing further space. Lilian, meanwhile, barely suppressed her gag reflex as her Mana dropped to ten percent.
"Lilian! Are you alright?" Dabney asked, his hands quick to take her weight off her feet. She jerked her arm out of his grip.
"Do not touch me, oaf," she snapped. He tried to use those big puppy dog eyes of his again, but it wouldn't work. Not again. "Focus on maintaining the barrier."
"I am," Dabney said, a shade of outrage creeping into his tone. How dare he grow angry at me!
Lilian huffed her breath and turned away, activating Meditation to help her push her Mana back to full. She had only gotten the hang of using it in combat, but it was far from truly effective yet.
Meditation is level 15!
Hmph. It was about time for it to level. She'd have it to Apprentice Tier in no time. Six weeks to learn a new Skill and gain fifteen levels in it? She would have been considered a prodigy among her family.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.
Family. She felt her stomach drop. She still hadn't found them, neither her mother or father. The Eyrie had fallen andshe turned away from those thoughts. Refused to acknowledge such impossible facts.
Lilian looked about, counting the Guilders around her. They'd only lost a handful on the journey through the Wall Quarter, reducing their number to just under thirty. Their success was heavily predicated upon the Silver Rank in their midst, along with the front line Bronze Ranks. She and Dabney were among the handful of Iron Ranks present, while the bulk of their expeditionary force were Tin. Elder Teine had them sent out that morning, but it had been an hours long slog through ever-thickening monstrosities to even reach the edge of city center. She glanced behind, where the slowly decomposing forms of the Revenants littered their path, arcing down the hill and back toward the red-gold glitter of the Wall.
Will this be enough, Teine? Will you release us from your Oaths? The others in the group may have come willingly, but Lilian had only wished to hide upon the Wall. After her experiences in the Domain she hadn't wanted to face the Revenants again. Yet when Teine had come to her, he had pressed upon her Oath in such a way that disobeying him was a distant, foreign thought. It burned to even consider it, and that terrified her almost as much as what became of her former teammates in the Domain.
Burn you and all the Elders. I'll get your Authority if it means cutting my ties. No longer did she care what her family thought or how rank in the Guild would elevate her; now it was survival, pure and simple.
"Iron Rank! Press ahead with your wall! Chevron formation!" The Silver Rank, Onai shouted at Dabney. The boy salutedlike an idiotand put his core to work. Dusty-brown Mana coalesced in his grip and the dun colored stone wall shifted into an angular 'V' shape before pushing ahead. Onai along with several other Bronze Rank fighters put their arms against it and pushed, lurching them all into a steady run as the Revenants lashed and gnashed their rotten teeth at them all. It forcefully reminded Lilian of the Domain.
You're free. You're not there any longer. Lilian's hands trembled as she noticed her Mana tick high enough to cast again. You're safe.
She disregarded the fact that the Tin Ranks were ragged, and that even the Bronze Ranks were quaffing tonics and potions to keep themselves afloat. They would make it through, find the Nest, and return in glory to the Elder. And she would have her reward.
"Commander Onai!"
An agile blur flitted into their moving bulwark, resolving into a nimble Bronze scout that easily shifted to keep pace. Onai turned her thick face and jutted her heavy jaw at the scout. "Report."
"Ettivan Square in one mile! And it's empty."
"These are the last abominations?" Someone murmured, and the scout's words were met with exhausted jubilation.
"Enough! Kill these few and we'll move ahead. Take it slow and steady!" Onai shouted at them all, and her smile was an ugly, eager thing. "Then we take that Nest."
The three of them made their way across the square. It was desolate in a way that made Felix's skin crawl. His sharp eyes and nose spotted blood smears and the gristle of gnawed on bone, but the perpetrators were absent. The stink of fury and broiling hate, that aura he'd come to associate with the Ravager and its spawn was thick as anywhere else. And growing thicker.
The arcade was elevated, stepped into the city side as everything else. City center had proven to be a network of stairs and landings, albeit ones large enough to hold several city blocks. The higher they moved, the closer to the ruins of the Guild tower they came. In the gaps between mansions, Felix could see out over the city and some of the Dust and Wall Quarters where it wasn't blocked by buildings or statuary. The Dust looked as it always did, stone blue and clay red roofs bright in the afternoon sunlight, almost as if all was right in the world.
The Wall Quarter, what little could be seen from the square, was devastated by the fall of the Eyrie. The Wall itself was a reddish-gold strip in the distance, atop with faint flashes could be seen. Discharges of Mana. They were fighting again, or had never stopped. Reports kept saying the Wall was being attacked at all hours of the day and night.
A wide fountain, carved with frolicking children along the base, dominated the space. Centered upon that, still gushing a flow of water, was the statue of an armored warrior of impossible dimensions; he held a winged monstrosity aloft, spitted on a spear that rained down a spray of water below. Ettivan, he presumed.
Within him, Pit growled.
God damn it.
"Fine," Felix said, throwing his hands up. "You win. We'll just walk away and you can have all theall the glory, or whatever you want. It's right through there." He gestured at the pump station doors.
"What we want is the loot, kid," their Commander said to him, though she spared a quick, greedy glance at the unhinged doors. "Now I don't know if this Iron Rank is spittin' shit or not, but if you're the Fiend, I ain't trustin' you at my back. She's right about one thing: the Fiend got us into this mess. You're comin' with me."
The brute force of the Silver Rank's aura manifested and pressed down on Felix. It was like she was leveraging emotion and something else; a weight to her presence that he couldn't quantify. Felix had felt auras like it before, many far worse. Onai's lacked some tooth in comparison to the Ravager King.
"Truly? You are attempting this?" The Hand asked, but the pressure against their senses only redoubled as Onai sneered at them.
"Try and stop me, fancy boy."
Reed slashed his bare hand into the air, and it was as if a sharpened blade sliced at the aura. The Silver Rank's pressure vanished instantly, and she stumbled backward, her nose bloody. The Hand smiled, wide and bright, and Felix felt a quiver fear rattle through his own Spirit.
Holy shit. That was just his hand. Felix watched the Guilders as if in slow motion, his own Perception coupled with his Intelligence overclocking his system for a brief burst. Is that why he's called that? That's dumb
An absolute wave of stone and ice and fire swept toward the three of them as nearly thirty Guilders unleashed their Skills all at once.
"Everlasting Bulwark!"
A wave of dust and fine powder broke free from the cobbles, launching upward to form a thickened sheet of sand. Ice and flame hit it, burning parts of it away, but it was replenished almost immediately. Felix blinked and Bodie laughed. "Don't make me wait all day, Felix! Go and kick some ass so I can drop this thing!"
Felix grinned.
Sovereign of Flesh!
His smile shattered as his human teeth were replaced by jagged fangs while his bones and skin crawled and snapped. Felix through himself up and over the Everlasting Bulwark, easily leaping the fifteen feet height and met three Guilders with the same idea.
Reign of Vellus!
Reign of Vellus!
Dual casted bolts of kinetic force and lightning slammed forward with all the subtlety of a thunderstorm on a cloudless day. The two Guilders, Bronze Ranks both, were catapulted backward and Felix landed amid a literal firestorm.
Onai the Silver Rank had recovered from her brief lapse, and had charged straight at Reed, her massive sword bearing down upon his own blade. Each swing sent shudders through the air and ground, and scattered the half-hearted Mana Skills that aimed for the pair, among them Sparkbolts.
Meanwhile, red flames bloomed outward all around Felix, and more were on their way. Charging across the square were the two hundred men and women he'd arrived with, each bearing a heavy metal shield and absolutely brimming with Skills that sparked and dazzled his Manasight. Felix laughed and swiped out with his talons, catching another Bronze Rank across his armor and hurling him to the side. Their faces twisted in horror at the sight of his dark scales and odd, cyan markings, even through his simple clothing.
"Up the steps! Now!" Lilian shouted, and the majority of the Guilders obeyed, scattering from Felix's claws. "Dabney!"
A rock the size and density of a cannonball blasted Felix in the chest, and drove him directly into the ground.
"HUAGH!"
The cobbles shattered beneath Felix and something cracked inside his chest. Blood flooded his mouth, but it only stained his teeth, his Transcendent Skill already busy replenishing his Health as the expense of his Essence store. Three more boulders fell from on high, but this time Felix dodged out of the way, and peered up at the source. Dabney had his hand outstretched and a Mana potion tipped up to his lips.
"Not so tough now, are you?!" Dabney moved his hands strangely and a glowing sigil appeared. Felix blinked. It meant 'slide.' "This is for the Domain!"
"I didn't do anything to you!"
An explosion of dusty brown Mana ripped from Dabney's channels before it was sucked up into the very building he stood atop. Simultaneously, the building itself began to tremble and great fissures burst apart its edifice.
"Avalanche!"
Great.
