Chapter 46 #2
Distant snarls and screams echo, ricocheting in all directions. My Zenith uses the flash of battling magic to gather into a defensive circle.
Eko and Seraphina sweep out first to assess the situation.
Highin, our marksman, follows close behind, providing coverage if things go wrong under the exceptional sight of his hawk vision.
Furthermore, his Celestial Gift is true aim, the ability to guide arrows over long distances, unrestricted by the typical range limits of telekinesis.
Eko’s body disappears into the faintest outline of ether.
His footsteps falling silent, he stills, becoming invisible.
Eko’s Celestial Gift is known as Ethereal Shifting, a deadly blessing in the hands of our Scouting Rogue.
My eyes go wide as floating daggers take shape out of a cloud of purple and indigo Celestial ether, before disappearing with him.
Seraphina shifts as well, taking on the form of a female Wuvon with cardamom-colored hair. Her skin marked by slithering shadows of black and crimson vines. The new form is clever for her role as our Spycraft, infiltration and intelligence gathering.
Atlas’ antennae glow faintly, illuminating a green glow over the remaining Zenith.
“While they do their job, let’s set up in a modified formation to account for our grounded Ellian Knights.
Gearin, position yourself further back with Kivi behind a runic shield.
We fall back to you if we need healing.” A flick of his finger designates their position.
Gearin summons a shield of defensive runes around Kivi, weaving scattered attack runes to float above him for quick release.
His Celestial Gift, Tinkerer, allows him to fix and create anything involving Rune Tech in an instant.
A skill that can turn disaster into survival in a pinch.
“Savaé and S?las, stay in the center like you would in flight. Vex and I will stand behind you so we can see the battle, and Vex can relay the upcoming shifts of the fight,” Atlas adds.
This is the perfect simulation to test out Vex’s Arcane Glyph of Battlesense, a unique intuition magic regarding glimpses of battle outcomes.
This is why Vex and her sunset-red Wyvern are usually used to draw attention while working with Atlas to coordinate our efforts into one fluid movement.
“Flint and Kissa, you head off the attack.”
Flint nods to Atlas’ command. As our Ground-Combatant, he’s the best option in any close quarters fighting with the Wuvon, taking them down in the least amount of hits. His Cerfios form of stone is impervious to their unparalleled Persuasive abilities.
“Orion, you distract enemies with your illusions.” Atlas’ instruction curls a fiendish smirk on Orion’s candy-red lips.
She’s our second line of defense for the same scenario if Flint is occupied.
Her powerful Persuasive skills can prevent Wuvon from overtaking our minds while we battle them at close range or keep enemies distracted in illusion magic, aided by reading their Auras.
“Juniper and Cinder are on crowd control; don’t let us get overwhelmed.
Fenwick stays back with the rest of us to attack and to defend if our opponent outflanks us,” Atlas finishes.
Juniper, a naturalist, can manipulate the natural world and counter the same power the Wuvon use.
Her Celestial Gift gives her the ability to make creatures out of vines to help fight the monsters the Wuvon control.
Her Arcane Glyph allows her to sprout hypnotizing flowers. She’s delightfully deadly.
Fenwick, our Kinetic, beams releasing golden light into a shield around us. Her powerful radiant magic spills from her hands, coating plasma along the blade of her broadsword.
“We have company,” Cinder calls out. Daggers of amber flames scorch into the air above his palms. “My heat vision is picking up our incoming scouting team with a thrall of monsters hot on their heels.” His chin nods in their oncoming direction.
I can barely see anything in the pitch dark; his heat vision is an incredibly useful Celestial Gift.
Seraph and Eko come to a sliding stop, panting. The faint outline of Highin is flying behind them, slinging arrows out one after another.
“Report,” Atlas commands.
“There are well over a hundred monsters of various forms heading this way,” Eko rasps.
“I only saw one Wuvon,” Seraph says shakily.
The uneasiness in her voice rattles me, so unlike her brass, confident demeanor.
“I don’t know how, but even from far away, she immediately knew I wasn’t truly Wuvon.
That’s… never happened before. I barely got away from her mindtrap talons lashing into me.
” Seraph’s trembling eases as S?las comes to her side, squeezing her shoulder.
I hate seeing her off-kilter like this. I hate this fear tangling up my team.
The fury brewing in my veins slams my eyelids shut, Chaos Magic igniting my atomic sight. The familiar shapes of my Zenith outline around me. My power prowls out, hunting within the darkness. I snarl at the hurtling mass of monsters roaring towards us.
I bathe myself in the fear of potential harm to my Zenith… to S?las. I feel the chill of it lash through. I grit my teeth against its attempts to crumple me, clawing at me from the inside out. But then my Chaos Magic snaps back, feasting.
I won’t let them take what is mine.
Power whips out of me, tracking down the source of my fear.
I seep into their bones, shattering the lattice structures that support them.
Their wailing roars thrum my craving for destruction.
I uncoil upwards to the monsters darting over the formless corpses I’ve left in my wake.
I spill into their blood, ripping it from their veins before they even have a chance to scream from the pain.
More. More. More. My power ravenously stalks the darkness.
A shift in the air near my Zenith draws me back.
Two small orbs appear, speckled in the constellations of the night sky, drenched in crimson.
A tall silhouette forming around them. The light from Fenwick’s shield catching on the Wuvon male’s long black hair as vines barbed in thorns lash out for us.
My magic sears into his blood, turning its iron molten.
Boiling him from the inside out as garnet bubbles out his gasping mouth.
Two waves of monsters thunder towards us from either side.
I sling the shattered bone fragments from my first victim to the right in a hail of daggers.
My power devours their pain, arching lighting from one beast to another, stilling their heart on impact.
S?las’ shadows slicing through the monsters I miss.
A wave of amber fire crashes into the horde on our left. Juniper’s vines slither out, tangling monsters to a halt while Highin’s arrows pierce their skulls.
Atlas works with Vex, signaling which direction the next wave’s coming from.
Fenwick slings a ball of light above Atlas' glowing signal, which erupts into raining plasma. The scattering horde of monsters skids to a stop along the edge of a chasm cracking open around us, an illusion cast by Orion. Gearin slings explosive runes with one hand while the other strengthens the runes of Fenwick’s radiant shield.
Kivi releases spores all around us, heightening our powers.
Eko darts among the monsters with Seraph. Her axes cut through limbs as his daggers find their weak spots.
My eyes widen as I watch Flint punch straight through the chest of a snapping monster, ripping out its heart before tearing another apart limb by limb with his bare hands.
While everyone is focusing on the threats in our immediate vicinity, I stretch my magic out.
There has to be more Wuvon here, the ones that kidnapped the Ellian Knights.
I glimpse flashes of ash, blinking its way through the waves of monsters.
It’s quick, like Shadowwalking, but this power feels different from S?las’ shadows. Sharper. Colder.
I focus on its movement, on her movements.
A pattern taking shape, allowing me to predict where the next portal will land.
I shatter the ground beneath my target, piercing up through the air.
As soon as the darkness is in the center, I let the weight of the broken earth come crashing down.
My power saving the disorder of her cracking bones.
A black energy whips out against my power, against my mind, fracturing my mental shields. Electricity builds in the clouds overhead. I yank down three bolts of lightning, striking my target.
A screech erupts as black pools over my mental shields, wriggling at the cracks.
Then the earth crushing the blackness melts to molten stone, burning her flesh as shadows violently coil around her throat, wringing tighter and tighter until life withers away.
An assist leading to a devastating combo from Cinder and S?las.
A slew of screeching curses cuts from my left, revealing a vine- and light-bound Wuvon male with Orion’s hands on his head.
She’s already starting her interrogation.
Seraphina and Orion will tag-team this job, a deadly duo together.
Orion sharing with Seraph the memories of their target’s loved ones, allowing her to shapeshift into them, playing with their mind until it shatters.
A move more tangible than even the Ethereal Maze of Whispers from the second entrance trial.
The lights flicker back on.
The Warded Hollow is reset as Professor Emberleaf claps.
“We may be looking at early deployment for this year’s primary Zenith Wing if you continue to show promise like you all did today.”
It’s unsettling to feel the carnage we reaped but see nothing in front of us other than scattered groups from other Wings. My heart’s still pounding with my ragged breaths and adrenaline.
Juniper and Fenwick jump with excitement. The notion of early deployment would have thrilled me, but now… there is more than myself on the line to lose.
Black velvet ribbons caress around my wrists.
I roll my eyes at S?las. “I’m not going to block you out. I promised.”
“Maybe I just need to touch you,” he purrs.
“I am not going anywhere,” I purr right back as I make my way to the door.
“It doesn’t make my need any less,” he rumbles, catching up behind me.
“We’re having dinner somewhere else tonight,” his lips whisper along my ear, igniting my skin ablaze.
He entwines my hand in his before I can even respond, and we’re bounding back to the southern field. I can barely keep up with him as he sprints. In the exhaustion of the day, I’ve almost forgotten the rest of my answers are waiting for me.