Chapter 300: A Long Time Coming (2/2)
With a growing sense of helplessness, he realized he had neither the tools nor the manpower to throw back the enemy in front of him. His hands clenched and unclenched impotently at his side as he came up with plan after plan, only to discard them as unusable.
”Then our only hope is that the Creators have mercy upon us.” Turi added morosely, her wings flattening against her back in her despair.
He was about to growl a response about the uselessness of relying on uncaring deities, when something miraculous actually occurred.
Dozens of projectiles, almost moving too quickly to be seen, suddenly impacted the Invader, punching holes in its body. Sahel could tell that the blow was far from lethal, but it had nevertheless hurt the monster greatly, forcing it to retract in upon itself to recover.
”Where did that come from? Are one of the Homeguard units still alive?” Turi asked in amazement.
”No bolt thrower in our arsenal could do something like that.” He shot back gruffly as he scanned the chamber for the source of the attack. He did not have to look long, as a small humanoid figure landed lightly on the plating nearby, moving quickly enough that Sahel was barely able to track his arrival.
It was a young human, by all appearances, wearing a crimson cloak, but carrying no obvious weapons. The Asani veteran assumed that due to his arrival and lack of armaments, the stranger must have been some kind of mage. That being said, he doubted that anyone so young would be capable of magical flight.
[Perhaps he is one of the Immortals, or is wearing some form of disguise. I can only hope he does not belong to the ranks of the undead. If those monsters got a hold of our technology…]
Almost as if he was intentionally ignoring the two Asani, the youth kept his attention on the Invader, muttering quietly under his breath as he did so. Although Sahel's Pyrathien was rusty, he could make no sense of the words, leading him to believe that it was a chant.
Turi moved to step forward, evidently seeking to question the newcomer, but Sahel held her back. Whatever the mage was intending to do, it would be best to not interrupt him.
The youth finished his chant, and the air around him erupted in an intense heat. Crackles of lightning ran through the deck plating, causing the two Asani to jump back to a safe distance. The human raised one arm above his head, fingers splayed, and a ball of angry blinding light formed in the palm of his hand. He held it there for a moment, as the air began to swirl around him.
The orb started to grow larger, and Sahel had to step back even further as the heat grew to match. He could only imagine what it must feel like to be caught in the center of that inferno. That a human could remain there without issue was almost as unbelievable as him creating the dangerous energy ball in the first place.
[The deck plating is beginning to melt...A Tier 3...no, he must be a Tier 4. No other mortal beings have such presence. But what is he doing here? Could word of our plight already reached the surface?]
Before he had a chance to contemplate the oddity of the situation, the human thrust his arm forward and hurled the ball at the Invader. It careened through the air, accompanied by a shriek of superheated wind. The extra-dimensional being attempted to avoid the attack, but the laws of this world kept it from making full use of its mobility. As a result, it could only partially escape the orb.
The energy did not hit it, so much as devour its way through the creature's mass. Roughly three quarters of the Invader's form was dissolved in the angry light, the remainder existing only because of its last minute avoidance. The ball continued, largely unaffected by the encounter, and slammed into the far wall of the Control Chamber, melting a hole that seemed to continue for some time before the temperature abated. He hoped it would not create a tunnel to the outside and compromise the structural integrity of the Asan. Of course, that was a distant concern at the moment.
Sahel clenched his talons in regret. The human had been so close to dealing the creature a finishing blow, driving it from this realm. Now they would need to strike again, before it had a chance to escape and reform. Suspecting that the mage likely had no idea what he was facing, he stepped forward to speak, using what little he remembered of his Pyrathien.
He could only hope that his meaning got across.
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[Welp, that should do it.] Mike thought as he watched the strange creature begin to dissolve into particles. He'd been concerned that he might have to do something else to deal with the monster, but evidently throwing a wad of plasma at it had done the trick.
”Much more, for to make death. Trap can hull, save all!”
Mike glanced over at the injured bird man, completely confused. ”...What?”
The Asani shook his head, and spoke again. ”Make death, must trap can!”
This time he tried to illustrate what he was talking about with his taloned hands, making a sort of crushing gesture, then acting like he was throwing something.
”Can you just speak normally, like in a language that you know?” He shot back, concentrating on using his Communication Magic.
The bird man blinked, momentarily taken aback, before yelling, ”The Invader is escaping! You have to trap it now, before it has a chance to regroup and reform!”
Mike looked back at the weird gelatin monster, which was still dissolving. As far as he could tell it was no longer alive, but then again he was probably speaking to the closest thing to an expert on gelatin monsters he was likely to find around here.
[I'm not sure how effective a physical restraint would be, and I don't want to try to maintain some kind of energy cage for any length of time, so I guess that leaves me with Space Magic.]
He went over a mental list of the chants he'd memorized, finally selecting one he'd had some luck with during practice.
”Twist and twirl at the heart of creation. Bend that which cannot be broken. Tie that which cannot be unwoven. Seal that which has no opening. [Spatial Prison]”
Warping space itself around the creature, he created something along the lines of a miniature pocket dimension that remained coterminous with reality, but had no traversable connection with it. By all appearances, it simply vanished from existence, however, Mike could still feel the creature just barely outside the realm of reality.
Normally, such an effect was temporary, locking the target in an inescapable prison for as long as the caster channeled mana into it, but he decided to add in his combo finisher which he'd developed with a fair amount of trial and error over the last few days.
While maintaining his concentration on the original spell, he channeled some additional mana and formed a dimensional blade at the exact point in space that maintained the connection between the Spatial Prison and the rest of the world. The result was the creation of a minor rift in the fabric of reality, which expelled the creature into inter-dimensional space.
[Whew, that was exhausting.] He thought to himself as he examined his mana reserves and determined that this method had taken nearly half of his supply.
He'd come up with this particular strategy as a means of disposing of troublesome opponents that refused to die. It was still in development, mainly because he'd yet to really determine where his targets ended up once they'd been ejected from the world. It was something he hadn't quite worked up the courage to explore just yet. Nevertheless, he was fairly confident that the creature would have trouble coming back.
Turning back towards the two Asani, Mike gave them a grin. ”Now that's taken care of, how about we do some introductions?”