Unbound

Volleys of arrows filled the sky, erupting in tangling vines and thorn-spitting plants as a mace made of compacted earth smashed the redcloaks back. Erupting spikes of steel stabbed through boot and greave, hobbling the lower-leveled Initiates, while sizzling acid burst from hastily inscribed sigaldry.

The Hierocratic forces led with their weakest at the fore, and that was all that allowed Mervin’s allies this moment. Had they sent their strongest, the battle would have already been over. Mervin couldn’t spare the portion of his Mind needed to understand such ruthless tactics, other than a phrase echoed by his trainers time and again. Forged in battle.

Shield Mastery is level 36!

Force Barrier is level 24!

Sword Mastery is level 36!

Drilling Thrust is level 44!

You Have Learned A Skill!

Pain Resistance (Uncommon)!

Pain Resistance is level 2!

Pain Resistance is level 6!

His leveling Skills were all that had saved him as, time and again, the hampered redcloaks came within a finger's-breadth of killing him. Mervin wove among the encroaching redcloaks, his foot nothing more than a red-hot lump of pain at the end of his leg. He spared a glance back, just in time to see the last of their warriors retreat behind the Sunrise Gate, and felt a sharp exhale of relief.

They’d accomplished the mission.

Yet Mervin found himself fighting on, stabbing at nearby Initiates with newfound rage in his veins. He could have made a run for it, perhaps even made it to the Gate while Karp and the others fought on…but no. Mervin was done with running.

He fought on, sword and shield stabbing and parrying with every ounce of technique and Skill he could muster. He hamstrung tangled opponents, blinded them, even drove their own burning blades into one another while Thangle blurred about, stabbing groins with his curved daggers.

It was chaos, and they were being beaten back.

Flaming swords of steel and armored bodies filled his vision as magic and brawn was brought to bear against their limited number. Bodie was knocked back by a behemoth of golden light, while Kelgan was all that stood between Karp and the burning blasts of crimson-armored Paladins. Mervin could no longer see Vivianne nor Yan. The press of bodies and Skills was too much.

Above the shouts and noise came an odd whirring sound so loud that Mervin fouled his riposte, nearly slicing his own hand off. That was nothing, however, compared to the almighty scream as the world was suffused with golden radiance.

“Mervin! Get down!” Thangle yelled.

It was an unnecessary command; the passage of the blast was so great it threw the entire battlefield to their faces as it tore above them. Past them. Directly at the wall.

“The gate!” Mervin tried to stand, but his foot twisted between the legs of a dead Initiate, and he collapsed with a cry. “The gate is—!”

“Fine.” Karp lowered his bow, for just a moment, as he stared in wonder back toward Haarwatch. “Just fine. Look!”

A sizzling dome of crystalline power had coated the gate—the entire wall—and pulsed with a swirling brown and green-gold radiance. The faintest of cracks shimmered, strides from the gate itself, but even they closed before Mervin’s wondering eyes.

“She did it,” Thangle said with a heavy breath. “Lady Zara did it.”

Sword sat up.

“What in the Light is that?” he demanded.

“Ah, uhm, it would seem that the heretics have utilized some form of crystallized Mana to generate another shield layer,” stammered the attending Inquisitor. The man was sweating beneath his enameled plate, and his eyes flicked between all four members of the High Guard as they crowded him and the railing. “One th–that seems able to withstand our Mana Cannon.”

Mace laughed, and Sword looked at her sharply. “What?” she asked. “They don't have Dragon’s claws, but damn it’ll be fun cracking that turtle’s shell.”

Sword grabbed the Inquisitor by the breastplate and lifted him bodily until they were face to helmet. The man’s Spirit almost broke beneath a spike of sudden fear, but Sword ignored it. “Fire the Mana Cannons again. All of them.”

Atop one of the four towers on the Sunrise Wall, a figure in flowing black robes stood upon a crystalline plinth. In her hands was what seemed like a piece of the sky itself, raised up and pulsing with rainbow waves of power. Ochre hands clutched the blue orb, now covered in crystals like a fine netting, upon which those rainbow waves rippled.

Crystalline Matrices Is At 78%

More Mana Is Required!

Zara blew a frustrated breath through her teeth, fighting against the scouring of her channels. The shield had not yet been ready, not for a battle of this scale, but Zara had been afforded few other options. She was barely holding it together with sheer Willpower, Intent, and her small store of Might. The Grand Harmony sang around her, through her, into the crystalline matrices that housed the Domain Core.

As did the modified siphon array they had centered upon her.

Zara’s awareness encompassed all of them, some three hundred volunteers who were now writhing under the pain of the array. The working was not refined, built as it was in the field, and aside from Felix, it had never been used by anyone on such a scale. Perhaps the boy and his unique abilities allowed it to work better for him, but Zara strained to keep the array from immediately ripping the magic out of her people. Slow and steady, she repeated, bending the Grand Harmony to slow the transmission until she needed more—if she gave it free reign, the array would extract every spare ounce of Mana on offer, leaving her people unconscious at best.

“You may choose to act at any time, Mister Knacht!” Zara shouted.

“It’s not ready yet!” Alister cried out from the wall below. Zara couldn’t see him directly, but her Perception encompassed him and his tarp-covered project. “I need another quarter glass!”

“We haven’t the time!” Zara warned, just as the massive Manaships began to hum once more. “They are firing again! Avet’s teeth…they’re charging all three! Brace yourselves!”

Particles of Mana swarmed the three large cannons that hung from the bottoms of the crafts, each one a marvel of milky-white steel and crimson-gold sigaldry. Fractions of a heartbeat later, the particles coalesced into a spinning lattice of living light. Zara saw it all as if through eternity’s lens, one moment flowing into another as each Manaship charged their weapons. The lattice spiraled in on itself, until it collapsed entirely, leaving only a bar of gleaming, golden light that tore through the sky.

All three of them hit at once.

A blazing pain speared through Zara’s Mind, Body, and Spirit as her shield was ripped apart entirely. Gleaming, crystalline facets burst under the combined salvo of Hierocratic might, and a bloodthirsty cheer sounded from the field. Their Tempered lungs easily overcame the cries of terror and sudden injury of her defenders.

Crystalline Matrices Is At 2%

More Mana Is Required!

Failure Imminent!

Zara hurriedly disengaged the siphon array, releasing her volunteers with a ragged gasp. Those who still remained standing stumbled away, hands to head or guts as Mana drain set in. The Chanter could not spare attention for them.

Crystalline Matrices Set To Standby!

Mana Siphon Disengaged!

The Manaships began to charge yet another round, but far more concerning was the figure in milky white armor that leaped from the flagship. They landed with a sound that split the very earth.

“This bores me! Heretics! Let me test your mettle myself!”

“Mace!” Sword growled, but the woman was already charging forward, shield and namesake weapon held high. A brace of Journeyman warriors formed up to meet her, but they would stand no chance. “Spear. Get down there. Bring her back.”

“Perhaps she will draw out this reclusive Autarch,” Spear mused, fingering the edge of her weapon. “At any rate, I imagine our odds—how do you say it, Tome? Our odds of sustaining minimal losses have increased by a significant margin.”

“Go. Now.”

Still chortling, Spear leaped from the deck.

“She is not wrong, you know,” Tome said.

“Quiet. You,” Sword snapped. “Fire the cannons as soon as they recharge. I want that wall sundered.”

“Pitiful!”

Mervin stumbled back, horrified by the mountainous woman who had trampled her own army, shoving even fully Tempered Paladins and Inquisitors from her path, before punching through Bodie’s wall of sand with a single, off-handed strike.

The man was bloody and barely standing, his huge muscles unable to stop the descent of the armored woman’s huge, red-gold mace. It smashed into his pauldrons, ripping through them and into the meat of his shoulder. Bodie fell.

“You dare wield a mace with a Strength so low?” she said through a disdainful snort. “You must be joking.”

“Nnng, sometimes it’s not about personal strength,” Bodie said, spitting out a few teeth. Mervin paled, hand barely able to hold onto his blade. “Sometimes, it’s all about finding the right sorta friends.”

“Pike Field!”

“Span’s Edge!”

Steel spikes ripped upward, thick as swords and as tall as any man. Behind them came Kelgan, spear thrust out to catch the gap between the woman’s elbow joint. Meanwhile, the bald, mustachioed Yan slid down low, brandishing his twin short swords like a pair of shears.

The huge woman in smooth, white armor moved too fast to track.

Mervin blinked, and the spikes were shattered, then both Kelgan and Yan were in the dirt. Bloody and unmoving.

“Who else?” the woman roared, her voice carrying like a giant’s roar. She tore off her helmet, revealing a square, ruddy face filled with freckles and a cascade of thick, auburn hair. “Who else can this pathetic city throw at me? Hm?”

Something tapped Mervin’s leg, almost making the young man collapse in fright. “Shh! It’s just me!” Thangle said. “We have to run! We can only die against the likes of her.”

“What of the others?” Mervin asked, looking to the sigils that erupted around the mace-wielding monster. Acid splashed up against her armor and failed to even blemish its polished surface.

“The others will do as they will! You proved yourself to them already. Run, boy!”

“I’ll not leave them behind!” Mervin insisted.

“No one gets left behind today,” another voice said, loud enough that it made the mace-wielding maniac pause. An armored figure landed in the dirt strides away from Mervin, short and stocky but wide with muscle and steel. Twin axes were alive with silver flames.

Commander Kastos, Mervin thought with profound relief.

“High Guard!” the Commander bellowed. “I’ve come for your head!”

Behind him came a fresh group of warriors, at least a half battalion, the lot of them bearing the purple cloaks of the Fiend’s Claw. They lifted their weapons as they ran from the Sunrise Gate, all of them shouting. "For Nagast! For the Fiend!"

"For Haarwatch and Lady Cal!"

The woman stopped her weapon mid-swing, moments from cleaving Kelgan’s head from his shoulders. Her face split with an eager, joyous grin. “Oh? A little army and an…Adept Tier. How unexpected in this backwater, but hardly enough for me to waste my time.”

Commander Reed landed, his half-cape whipping about upon a gust of air Mana. He leveled his huge sword at the woman. “Face me as well, then.”

“Two Adepts, and one approaching the middle stages of their Temper. This fight intrigues me now.” She gripped her oversized mace in both hands, the metal almost glowing in the fading afternoon light. “I had hoped causing a ruckus down here might have lured your leader out of hiding, but…I suppose you will do. For now.”

Mervin didn’t see them move; he only felt the aftermath as a wave of pressure blasted him off his feet. He flew, tumbling head over heels into mud and rock before fetching up against the legs of the Claw members. Rough hands grabbed him and held him tight, while Mervin craned his neck to see.

Silver fire filled a crater the size of his old farmhouse, filled with sharp-edged holes that still glowed with heat. The white-armored High Guard stood in the center, feet barely moved from her starting position, and both Commanders were bloody on the ground.

Mervin felt more than heard the intake of breath from the soldiers around him. He couldn’t believe it either. “H–how strong is that woman?” he asked.

“Master Tier,” someone said.

Master Tier. Thangle was right. Mervin closed his eyes. We’re all dead.

“Look!”

Mervin cracked open his eyes again and, amazingly, he saw the commanders stir.

“Hearty Bodies on you two,” the High Guard said, her voice seeming a touch annoyed.

“Ain’t dead yet,” Commander Kastos groaned. His famous armor had broken apart from his leg, revealing a bloody calf and foot. “Not by a long shot.”

Commander Reed didn’t say anything, but he braced himself on his huge sword and stood, too.

"Looks like you need help, Mace!"

Before the mountainous woman could act again, another figure dropped from the sky. She was armored similarly in milky white plates and an obscuring helm, but bore a red-gold spear in her hands that was twice the height of an average Human. “These Adepts too much for you to handle?”

Mace gripped her weapon. “Shut your mouth, Spear.”

“Come back to the ship.”

Mace snorted. “And miss out on going wild against these fools?”

“They’re children, Mace.”

“Fight awful hard for children. Besides, they already tried to kill me.” Mace grinned. “It’s personal now.”

“Fine,” the woman known as Spear said, and she lifted her too-long weapon into the sky. “I will remove the temptation.”

“Stop!” Mace shouted, but it was too late.

Something whipped from the red-gold weapon, something fast and invisible that shot directly into the sky. A sense of overwhelming dread sank into Mervin’s stomach as he witnessed it, which was only compounded by Commander Kastos’ frantic shout.

“Retreat!”

In the sky, hundreds—no, thousands—of shapes manifested. Mervin gaped at them as he was carried back, the Claw running with every ounce of Strength and Agility they could burn. Spears of…air?

The High Guard thrust her weapon upward, as if piercing the heavens themselves…and every single conjured spear fell.

“You ruin all my fun!” Mace screamed, almost as loud as the air and metal Mana that hurtled toward Mervin’s face. He closed his eyes.

Pathless preserve me…!

Ouranic Override In Place!

ERROR!

Mervin fell, again, as a wave of pressure threw him and the Claw members off their feet. Yet, as he blinked his eyes open, he wasn’t greeted by a conjured spear or the bloody remnants of his fellows…but instead, his vision was dominated by the sky turned mad.

“What is that voice?” Mace shouted.

“I don’t know!” Spear replied. “It’s in my head!”

Storm clouds had gathered in the late afternoon sky, dimming the light and spilling whipping winds and a deep, horrifying darkness across their shapes.

Ouranic Override Removed!

Chthonic Authority Recognized!

At the very center, the sky itself ripped open into a huge, fanged maw of shadow that bellowed a chorus of defiance into the heavens. The High Guard flinched, and the Manaships swayed in the aftershocks.

Karp, who had somehow gotten next to Mervin, clapped him on the back. He was laughing so hard he was crying. “The Fiend’s own luck!”

An army of huge serpents burst from that dark maw, and at their head was a creature too big to be allowed. A mountainous monstrosity of golden scales and crystalline horn, and upon its back rode a man in black, surmounted by a blaze of red-gold and blue-white power.

“GET OFF MY LAWN!”

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