Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six - AF Chapter 276 – A Harbinger of Defeat
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Gaerlan was bald now, the mad Empyrean’s hair burned away by the multiple energies assaulting him, assailing his flesh and mind and soul, glowing Empyrean eyes spewing out the raging energies running through him out of his control. His mouth was contorted in a silent scream as the punishment of the Harbinger ground away at him, but he was still alive, somehow, although his sanity had to be suspect.
Kris’ eyes shifted to the hovering, inhuman form of the Harbinger, its malleable flesh woven of Elemental energies. It was only roughly humanoid, arms more like tentacles than true limbs, head a thing of putty dumped on a floating torso held aloft by a small whirlwind of repulsion from the earth that was protesting its very existence here, so easy to sense and feel as it gyrated about the place.
It was held in the Palace as surely as Gaerlan was inside his breached command circle, Candeth Martine’s artful interruption opening it up and allowing the Harbinger to turn on its would-be commander this time, exacting revenge for his presumption of Summoning and attempting to control it once again!
None of the stories about Gaerlan had praised his inventiveness, so there was that.
She saw the first bolts of lightning and fire coming in, and the Elementals nearby all tensed and turned at some unspoken alarm. With supernatural speed, they flowed as much as raced in the direction of the fighting, as did all the other Elementals standing guard near the entry way to the Castle.
It was why she’d come up the backside of it, waiting not twenty yards from the raging fury of the Harbinger tossing spells right and left, poised on the walls for her moment, and her chance.
Doing anything while the Harbinger was not occupied was completely stupid, the level of magic being thrown around was just too high. When she struck, she’d have to do it quickly, preferably while it was in the middle of being assaulted by a shit ton of Wisps, and that seemed to be what was coming.
The Harbinger was over by the entry now, repeated waves of green and purple Meteors arcing out and over and down, the rumbles and crackles and hissing splashes of their impacts now clearly audibly, along with the shrill notes of Wisps popping and collapsing under the magical assaults.
It didn’t matter. With the Harbinger now focused on the fight directly in front of it, the waves of Wisps boiled up the lower ramps even faster, surging up as they were drawn in the wake of those before them to expand, expand, expand their numbers. There was literally nowhere else to go for them, every bunch of them slain spawning double their numbers in retaliation.
Huh, nearing Highmoon. So much light was coming from the plume trapping Gaerlan that she hadn’t noticed night falling.
Good. This should all be wrapped up before dawn, and Natural Renewal would close things out soon afterward.
The swirling, building hum of more and more Wisps grew louder, while the raging forms of the Elementals laying about themselves sputtered and died, one by one. Writhing dark forms boiled past them, leading with Drains and Harms of their own, not even bothering with Elemental attack spells after the Wisps realized they wouldn’t work.
The Wisps boiled up to the doors of the Palace, and fell upon the Harbinger.
It was a big, powerful creature, with a Health Qi pool that numbered in six digits. It had prodigious regeneration and magical resistance, and a sweeping blow of its arm could kill up to half a dozen Wisps in front of it, while their lashing attacks at its form didn’t seem to do more then raise welts that rapidly vanished.
But then ALL the Elementals were gone, and the Harbinger was all alone, facing a river of Wisps all by itself. No matter how many it killed, it made no difference in their numbers whatsoever.
And at least fifty of them were focused on it all the time.
Harms and Drains warred over it, leeching at it, sucking away its Health, Stamina, and Mana. Point-blank Rings of spells cleared away dozens of Wisps, making no difference as those beyond immediately charged in to fill up the openings.
The Harbinger killed hundreds more, thousands more, before it slowly drifted back from the entrance, as if realizing that it simply couldn’t win here. It drew back, trying to narrow down how many Wisps could attack it, but the ones behind kept up their spell assaults mindlessly.
Even if only one in ten of their attacks landed, they were still leeching it down, and the constant pressure never stopped!
Mindlessly, the Wisps followed the living, moving target they could not ignore, and slowly, over minutes that stretched into a full half-hour of grudging, step by step retreat, spells assaults rocking and cratering the gate even further as hundreds and thousands of Wisps died, the Elemental Harbinger was forced back towards the flume of ravening energies that was the true source of the Elemental Rift that had torn the island open.
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Wisps spilled around the Harbinger, some of them beginning to mindlessly attack the fountain of energies, to little to no effect. Some even blew apart after trying to pummel it with their swirling bodies of negative energy, going up like fireworks and fading away before they could hit the ground.
That left the Harbinger, who now had its back to the circle imprisoning Gaerlan. It was visibly frantic as it lashed out in all directions, called down more spells to clear out gaping holes in its attackers again and again… and the holes were filled with new Wisps, the assault continuing without let up as its Health and Mana plummeted and were sucked away.
Now.
From absolute stillness to leaping motion, covering thirty yards in one lightfoot-powered bounding strike. Quaver was out and blazing crystalline Ruby and vivic, the Flames on it very red, indeed.
Her killing intent was so pointed that her target even jerked his head around to helplessly stare at her coming down out of the sky. Quaver cut down in a swath of Lost Light to chop completely through his neck.
Banefires latched onto Elemental energies, led them to all the right spots as vivus chased them, and Gaerlan’s headless corpse blew into white dust almost instantly.
That also happened to remove the Harbinger’s mortal anchor to this plane… and left a roiling ball of vivus right in the middle of some corrupted Elemental mana of the most ferocious sort.
The Harbinger turned on her just as its anchoring faded, and a huge chunk of its remaining power melted away, just like that. It stared at her as she landed, Gaerlan’s severed head still dripping elemental goo from it in her hand, and she looked up at it.
Then the fumarole of elemental fury exploded, and it was time to go.
Kris leapt just as it was going off, and the explosion caught her in midair. It was quite impressive, hammering her with a wall of solid air preceding all the energies going crazy as vivus ripped them apart and the Land fed… and the Harbinger exploded in a blast of Pyrrhic doom, a mind-rending scream ripping out of it as it wasn’t just expelled from the mortal realm.
Oh, no. Vivus was much hungrier than that, and destruction of its mortal form was an excuse for vivus to feast on its spirit. It raged across the fading form of the Entity like fire on gasoline. The Harbinger couldn’t fade away fast enough to stop it as it paid a price for manifesting in the mortal world that it likely had never imagined was even possible.
As for Princess Kristie, she was launched right over the walls of the Palace as the explosion ripped up into the sky behind her. All the Wisps there in the courtyard were wiped away, a secondary Vivic Spawn position was started there, and she fell with the heavier remains of the top of the walls towards the ground below.
Cloudstepping Sandals turned that arc of descent into a downslope skating race. The Wisps below didn’t really realize what was happening as her arc of flight became a straight sliding slope down toward the shores. If dozens of spells reached up to take potshots at her, her Null either dealt with them or they missed her entirely as she headed down and around to the slightly sparkling line of archers still hard at work near the shores there.
It was also the moment that using magic became available, and the War Mages of the kingdom hovering offshore raced ahead on their own Barges and Wagons to join the fun. They could only contribute until they ran out of mana, it was true, and this wasn’t a foe they had to Imperil or anything, so they could fully use their War Magic and blast away to their heart’s content… with the caveat that they’d attract the attention of the Wisps if they did so.
But that was okay, because the numbers of Wisps weren’t going to stop increasing, especially since the Harbinger wasn’t thinning them at all anymore, and the Elementals were continuing to slaughter and be slaughtered in turn by them.
It was Karma, and it was waiting for no one.
That also happened to include the Lady Magos.
Everyone saw her finally take her Staff in hand, having done precious little besides monitor the magic, flow of Wisps, and positioning of the force. Long glittering wedges of force, three of them, spun up around her arm, counter-spinning to one another, seething with so many energies hostile to the Wisps it was hard to discern them all.
The Darts shot out, condensed into Rays, the Rays doubled themselves in midair, and slammed into their first targets, popping them instantly. Then the Chains raged out in a wild dance, slaughtering two dozen Wisps each in a crazed dance of silver and golden Holy Force magic like nothing any other mage could manage.
With a snap, three more sets of three Darts each popped into existence around her arm, while the nearest Wisps turned her way. Their numbers were already bringing pressure in their direction that was prompting the Mick to walk the archer line backwards, even as their volley fire continued.
Three sets of Darts turned to Rays, doubled, became six Rays, and plowed into the Wisps, blazing a trail of death through the incoming mass of them, over eightscore popping and dying as the magic tore through them and wiped most of the incoming horde, Spotters shading the rest for missile fire to tear through.
Now, their continuous advance became a slow retreat. Wisps attracted by magic and the only resistance aside from the lines of Elementals boiled swiftly in their direction.
Fifty died every two seconds, webs of dual Chains bouncing unerringly between them, popping them instantly as they passed, thinning out those that were coming precipitously, and the archers and rock-tossers dealt with the rest.
Still, some were approaching close enough to get off spells before they were popped, but the mantlets on the Barges and Wagons did the job of containing and deflecting the blasts.
Plus, ammo was starting to run low, so there was no real reason to stick around.
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I had a lot of target tracking to do, but that didn’t stop me from admiring Princess Kristie’s newest trick. Drop lined up, and profound targeting did its job. The thrum as it released was audibly different from the Bows around it, which all paused as she shot… and her bolt hit a Wisp, popped and sparkled around it, lighting it up, and then the quarrel continued on unerringly, driving through seven different Wisps behind the first one, lighting all of them up for the archers’ perusal.
The Roaches shot off in series, and finished every single one of the Wisps she wounded, Kris smoothly taking over primary first-shot duties as the Mick continued picking out the target.
Penetrating Shot was quite the nice feat, as it were. It slowed down her rate of fire, but with so many targets packed so close, it hit far more of them than if she was pumping bolts as fast as her Autobow could send them out. She didn’t really do that much more damage than any of the devoted archers was doing, but she hit far more enemies than any of them!
