by Scott Seier
Bale chuckled and tried to brush off Grim's grasp. After a second of failing to break his grip Bale gave up. "Yeah, yeah. I got it. No one can find me if I don't want them to. Even the high levels have no way of detecting me. Everything is going to be fine." Grim narrowed his eyes, but let the banker go. The only reason he was so close to the conflict at all was because even Grim had never seen so complete of an invisibility before. "Be sure that you keep my words in mind." Grim growled, then turned towards the edge of the woods. "It's time. Let's get this done." Everyone stood and followed. Grim was completely confident that on paper his group should win. He was just extremely worried that the paper didn't have all the facts.
"Here they come." Billy's words drew me out of my internal interfaces. I let my eyes focus for a seconds before I picked out our guests. "Only four. That means Grim is going to infiltrate while we are distracted. We're going with the zerg strat. Kill these guys as fast as possible, ignore Grim until after they are dealt with, then we find him." Hael said this even though everyone was already well acquainted with the contingency plan. I figured it was more to calm his own nerves than anything else. "Billy.." Billy shot Hael a fierce look. "Hael, I know. We all know. Focus on your own job now. Lets get this done." Hael grinned and rolled his shoulders. "Right, got it." He drew his dual daggers and twirled them deftly. "Got it." He muttered. His face growing serious.
We stood at the base of the walls on the east side of the town, but as the outlaws approached, my team began walking slowly forward out into the center of the field. I guess to make more space between the walls and them? Or maybe just to be dramatic... I had a hard time determining which.
Their lineup was imposing to say the least. The Yeti guy was already in his shifted form, but he seemed to be growing larger by the minute. Their Manticore shifter was taking long languorous strides as if he was on his way to an afternoon nap, long claws casually tearing clumps of grass up with every step while its reptilian tongue probed the air every few seconds. The singing girl was walking smoothly, her injuries obviously healed, her hatred as healthy as ever, bleeding into the air as she stalked towards us. The archer in red was walking very closely at her side. His expression keen, hyper focused. His body looking like it wanted nothing more than to move between us and the angry girl.
At some unseen signal everyone reorganized. Billy moved behind Hael to line up with the archer, while Hael made sure to lock eyes with the Manticore. Will's form blurred and he shot up several inches and grew fur over parts of his face and arms. His bracers reacted for the first time in a long time. I'd seen them in action before, but now they looked like they were working overtime. The leaves that were woven to form them were not only flipped silver, not only slowly crawling up his arms in a never ending attempt to control his raging power, but when I looked closely I could see that the tiny veins that ran through each leaf were slowly turning red.
Will let out a grunting growl and shivered, his form once again going through a change. His pants were now far too short for him and he towered over the rest of us. His jaw was elongated and protruding from his face, with long teeth curling down over his lips. The vines that bound his bracers together lurched up and over his shoulders, wreathing his neck and chest with silver and red leaves. We kept walking. "Um, Will?" I stuttered quietly. "You okay?" Hael shot a look our way and his eyes widened when he noticed the state that our druid was in. Without saying anything he began angling away from us. Making it look like it was planned. Billy followed the move, and Gleer on my other side progressed in the same fashion.
It was just me and Will still near each other as I cast one last worried look at him before giving him the space that his current state demanded. I'd never seen him pushed so far before. He must have really been underselling how hard it was to keep the Lycan in check.
By the time that our two groups were within shouting distance the outlaws had spread themselves to match our current formation and had begun to draw their weapons. The ones that had weapons at least, got them ready. Billy and their archer mirrored each other as they both swung their bows off their backs and nocked arrows. Gleer and the angry lady each drew out wands, the singer additionally producing a long staff, while Gleer casually pulled out her spell book and dropped it. The book glowed gently and began to float, Following her perfectly. Will and the Yeti were both at their maximum sizes, hopefully, and were each nearly bursting from the inside out in their eagerness to tear each other apart. Hael and the Manticore were both stretching. Hael making sure his shoulders and elbows were limber, while the catlike-scorpion-shark-thing was stretching like any common house cat would, yawning and displaying horrifying rows of teeth in its too-big maw.
Then there was me. Just standing with no one directly lined up to oppose. It was weird that none of them even tried to line up with me. I would think that the angry singer would have a bone to pick with me still, but I guess that silencing spell that Gleer smacked her with earlier really was that unpleasant. You'd think she would come after the guy that broke her leg and nearly crushed the rest of her under a bunch of branches, but whatever. Are you truly wishing that she would try to kill you? If none of them are actively focused on you that means we can make quick work of any of them while they are otherwise occupied.
A subtle shift from the archer was all it took to set off the powder keg of tension that had building between us. It may have been just a finger twitch on his part, but regardless, it was caught by Will, a roar ripped its way out of his chest and his back foot sank a full foot into the dirt when he pushed off to charge the Yeti.
Billy and the red archer had sparks flying between them as their arrows clipped each other mid-air. Gleer and the singer singed the air between them as Gleer released a truly impressive fireball, while the singer heaved a massive breath and ignited the air she was exhaling. Then she amplified it somehow to the point that when the two spells collided they created a super heated shockwave that set the grass on fire in a giant circle around it. Hael was just gone, along with the Manticore, but I could occasionally see grass being torn up as scuffles erupted here or there. I didn't stay immobile long. Will collided with the steel clad Yeti with enough force that the enemy shifter was sent sliding backwards, his huge feet grinding furrows into the earth the whole time. I focused on the giant enemy and cast my astral tag. Even if I could lower his strength by a tiny amount it could be what Will needed to get an edge.
Unfortunately my spell seemed to fold itself into nothingness the instant it tried to settle into the giant fuzzy outlaw.
Every time I cast a spell and the blanket took it away, the figure's camouflage wavered ever so slightly. It had just been bad luck on the outlaws part that I'd noticed at all. I happened to be staring at the yeti and the shimmer had occurred directly in my line of sight behind the huge guy. Pure luck, but I'd take it. Just not quite yet.
voice vibrated the air powerfully, and suddenly I could feel her will. "Stand still." A simple command. When she hit her lowest note she began an ascending scale, but this time flames poured from her lips as well. Gleer struggled desperately. Her mana pool must have been monstrous to have even survived this long against the singing girl. I had no idea that the angry lady across the field had so much literal fire power packed into her petite frame.
Gleer's magic swapped from yellow-red flames to deep blue frost in a snap. The ice forming all around the mage to protect her form the fiery onslaught and the mind controlling song at the same time. The singing girl snarled and threw out several complicated sounding runs. Each time her voice hit its highest or lowest registers, huge waves of flame flooded over Gleer, and her suggestion became more overpowering. Luckily I had sorted that out for my team.
Will was naturally immune to the enthralling effects, but the rest of us were certainly susceptible. To counteract this, I slapped a few Alphas discreetly onto each of my teammates. They had two commands. Hang on, and absorb any foreign mana. It worked like a charm. The girl would sing, injecting the air with her influence, but when we breathed it in, Alpha worked to filter out her mana so that her breath became inert. The girl's eyes were bulging wider and wider by the second as none of us succumbed to her spell. "Siren! It isn't working, stop wasting your mana." The archer in red screamed at the flaming girl. So her name was Siren? Most likely a code name. All of the outlaws were immune to inspection somehow, just like the top end raiders that Milenta had brought in. I had to learn that trick..
Instantly the girl growled and cut off her beautiful voice. "Fine." She spit. If I thought her fire was impressive before, well, she outclassed her previous performance by a clean factor of two. At least. Gleer went from an orb of ice that was valiantly resisting the tongues of fire that surrounded her. To completely lost in an actual firestorm of heat. Siren was breathing fire like a damn dragon. Her manic smile widening by the second as it became clear that Gleer couldn't match her shear power. That's where I step in. A falling gate slammed into the earth two feet in front of Siren. Her torrent of flame was instantly disrupted, like putting a spoon under a faucet, it deflected the stream in a massive arc and kicked more than a little bit of the heat back onto her.
She screamed and cut off her attack immediately, her cloth and leather armor smoking dangerously. She looked completely unharmed, the scream was apparently just more of her trademark anger. "Is this damn wall all you can do? Christ, get a life, freak." She bellowed at me. I frowned. Gleer frowned harder. "I really don't like that word..." her voice was soft as she stepped out of the remains of the dome of ice she had been using as a shield. "I really don't like that word." Siren's attention snapped back to Gleer and crazy sneer spread across her face. "Oh, I'm so sorry, freak. I'll be sure to be more mindful of my insults in the future."
Gleer Grimaced, then her eyebrows nearly met as her frowned deepened even further. "I wasn't going to use this again you know. I thought it was oppressive of me to steal your voice, but some people don't deserve to talk." Gleer snapped her fingers and a half dozen glyphs burst to life around her, burned into the air with pure mana. She had prepared this one ahead of time... a flash of movement brought the glyphs to an end, and Siren's words were cut off mid tirade. She screamed, but no sound came out. He gripped her neck, coughing violently, but still no sound.
Two roars of anger met the result of Gleer's magic. The first was the archer. He was being beaten handily by Billy, her pure skill outclassing him in every way despite him being the more powerful of the two, but seeing Siren struggling must have turned his vision red. He drew an arrow and used like a dagger to deflect Billy's incoming projectile. The impact of the two steel tipped arrows caused a shower of sparks to erupt as they shattered each other on contact, but that didn't seem to bother him. He wasn't even looking at Billy anymore. He took the shattered remains of the arrowhead and used it to draw a long jagged line over the top of his opposite hand.
Blood dripped from the wound, but not a single drop hit the grass. They all stayed suspended in mid-air a few inches under his hand. His anger was palpable, and I noticed Will kick the Yeti away for a second and violently rub his nose as if he'd just been pepper sprayed. That's where the second roar of anger came from. The Yeti took the shot from Will valiantly, but when he looked around and saw the archer bleeding and Siren on her knees hacking, he lost it. Everything was kicked up several notches then.
Gleer was just...gone. A huge jagged crater smoking where she'd been standing a few seconds before. The archer was heaving massive breaths, his hand now pouring blood as if he'd struck an artery although he'd gotten no where close to one. Billy looked like a thundercloud and in retaliation, Siren was obliterated a moment later. A tail of dark green and blue energy linking Billy's raised bow and Sirens grave marker. The archer flinched. His eyes wide as if he didn't believe what he'd just seen. He turned back to Billy just in time to see another blue and green death arrow heading his way. He dodged it, barely, and whipped his hand through the air, spreading his levitating blood all over the space between Billy and himself.
Then I was off. circling around the Yeti as Will tried his hardest to not get crushed. The Lycan was actually all smiles and giggles. He would dive forward and rake his now quite long claws across some swath of exposed yeti body, then retreat with a gleam in his eyes. I could sense very little of the real Will in there at the moment. The bracers that usually kept the Lycan in check were now spread all over his upper body, and I could see several of the leaves had ruptured, turning completely red. As I watched a few more veins pop and dyed the rest of the silver leaves a dark crimson. I didn't know for sure what the bloody leaves meant, but I was pretty positive that the Lycan being in near-complete control had something to do with it.
A couple times I dropped a gate just in time to save Will/the Lycan from being flattened by the Yeti's enormously powerful attacks. The only time that the Yeti fully connected with one of my barriers was eye opening. My gate was bent nearly in half and uprooted, flying over thirty yards and then sliding for another ten before it faded away. Jeez...
Will was taking shots from this thing!? Just as I had the thought, Will sliced a huge wound across the Yeti's chest, but took a massive uppercut for his trouble. He was sent flying over my head and into the trees. I waited and looked hopefully in that direction for a few seconds, really hoping that Will wasn't dead, but all I saw were the branches of the trees waving at me cheerfully in the nice breeze. Lovely...
A blue and green arrow seared itself into the Yeti's chest, but burned out before it could penetrate far enough to do anything significant. Billy cursed and refocused on her task of taking out the archer. Will was still MIA and the Yeti took a huge, thunderous step in my direction. "Oh no you don't." I muttered. A streak of black and purple blurred past the backs of his knees and ankles, leaving behind long and deep gouges. The Yeti screamed out in a voice that sounded like a mix between human and a jet engine.
all. And you are more than welcome for my intervention. I glanced to the wall and confirmed the presence of a grave marker there, then I rolled my eyes at the overly polite, and unendingly rude cloud of iron sand.
The Yeti struggled to stay on his feet, wobbling with his arms outstretched.
I glanced at the woods, wondering where Will was, when he bolted out of the trees at a blistering pace. His gear was in tatters, but his form looked stronger than ever. Corded muscles running over his elongated limbs rippled as he lunged forward and buried his hand up to his elbow in the Yeti's chest. The Lycan grinned a bloody smile into his enemy's face, but the Yeti wasn't done. He grabbed Will around the chest, tore the embedded arm out of him, and slammed his body into the ground, upside down. Wills head and shoulders were completely embedded in the dirt, while his arms and legs hung limply. Vigil zipped from my arm and left six long cuts over the Yeti's wide back. That should do it.
