Chapter 52: Concepts and Principles. (2/2)
“Bring it,” she whispered in a low voice.
And the creature came. The tunnel filled with a chill wind, frigid and wet, a roaring torrent that sapped spirit as well as body heat. Viv’s breath frosted in the air as the wave crawled through murder holes to grip at the defenders.
“Steady…”
Two blue eyes appeared from afar, shining ominously in the darkness. The witch only had a second to react as her instincts screamed at her.
“Nope!”
Black mana crashed against her shield and threatened to pierce it. She had half a second to react and reinforce the structure. For the second time, her danger sense proved its worth.
The bolt finally petered out. It was not charged with any ‘meaning’ and yet it had almost overwhelmed her efficient defenses. There was only one explanation. What they were facing was also a spellcaster.
And it was better at it than she was.
‘It’s just experience,” she told herself as she stopped another similar bolt, this time aimed directly at her. The troops before her felt the impact and cast worried glances in her direction as she walked to the long, horizontal gap.
“Arty.”
Her own counter arched beautifully across the air, only for a crystalline blue shield to stop it. In the arctic light of the spell, she saw her foe for the first time.
It was clearly undead, a stripped skeleton clad in tattered robes that resembled her own. It wielded a scepter and hid its bony frame under a cloak of ratty furs. The eyes were the most defining feature. They reminded Viv of Solfis’ unrelenting hatred, but they lacked his focus and adamantine self-control. Their intensity was such that she felt more than saw them fix on her like lasers. Despite herself, she felt a deep worry crawl up her spine. This time, she may have bit off more than she could chew.
[Failed Lich: a powerful caster who attempted to bind his soul to a frame other than his living body and failed. The frame retains parts of the caster’s abilities but lacks part or most of its intellect. Extremely dangerous.]
//Threat identified: failed lich.
//Threat level: high.
//Recommended tactics: attrition.
Solfis’ cold voice calmly stated advice, lifting the cloak of fear from her shoulders. If he thought her in deadly danger, he would have intervened. He still thought that she could take it down, and she could now see how, as hordes of revenants kept getting in.
The failed lich charged another powerful spell. She could feel the intense mana from here, it was something that she had never encountered before. Ice. Or to be precise, an aspect of blue that spoke of ice. The true meaning and nature of the color escaped her, skipping on the surface of her mind without giving her purchase. Viv decided to just prepare another shield.
A few seconds later, a spike of blue energy surged from the creature.
//Intercept.
“Purge!”
Never doubt Solfis. She obeyed in the same moment, her danger sense crying death. The smaller black spell impacted the larger one. The spike exploded in azure shrapnels.
“Nope!”
Viv made her shield wide and thin. It expanded in an umbrella and blocked most of those. She felt every impact in her bones.
The leftover projectiles hit the wall, piercing it in places. A few Yries screamed. She had no time to check on them but she knew that someone had died. Had to keep her attention on the foe.
Some of the guards swore.
A distant part of her mind acknowledged that she had stopped something with the power of a mortar shell with her mind, but it was eclipsed by the bigger part, currently screaming ‘SHITSHITSHITSHITGOTTASTAYFOCUSED’.
“True mass yoink.”
Another ball of searching darkness ravaged the torrent of revenants crashing down the tunnel, and her conduits and core were filled again. The spells she had used were simple and well-practiced, but she had had to overcharge them massively. She would have been running on fumes without the convenient sources of energy around her.
//Arty.
A thick diamond spear emerged from the creature, as long as a man, as sharp as a scalpel.
“Arty!”
Viv’s own attack surged. The failed lich detected it and swished to the right. It was levitating.
“Hah. You wish.”
Viv’s spell angled as it tracked its target. The creature screamed again and the spear faded, replaced by another shimmering blue shield. This time, it was weaker. An entire side crumpled under her attack like cardboard under a sledgehammer.
The thing screamed again, the power even greater. Viv manifested the helmet part of her stupidly named ‘sneaky cloaky’ and could still feel her entire body vibrate. She was not alone though, and a great cry sounded behind her. Suddenly, she felt a great surge of the type of mana Varska used and the sound was muffled. It gave her the opportunity to finally hear what she needed.
//This will be a powerful area-of effect spell, Your Grace.
“I'll use my own.”
Viv’s mind worked overtime to draw mana from her core and place it outside of her body, then use its threads to form several symbols and hold them in her mind at the same time. Finally, she charged the whole thing with a concept only a trained mind could comprehend, and prepared to hurl it at her foe. And not a minute too soon.
A large cloud of powdery sapphire expanded to cover the entire path, then traveled down with conceited laziness. Any revenant caught in its trajectory was turned into a crystalline statue.
The power above Viv’s hand boiled and struggled but she kept adding into it. Even from that far away, she could feel the incredible potency of the spell, and the malice it carried. The strange blizzard destroyed its victims on a fundamental level. She could feel it.
Death descended upon her with a winter maw, but she held her ground. It had to be timed right. Breathe in, breathe out. On her side of the wall, the silence was deafening.
“Blight.”
The overcharged spell was launched in perfect quiet, an abyssal ball traveling at deceptively slow speed. It deployed ten steps away from the edge of the barricade.
The silence continued for a few seconds until the blight spell hit the first revenant still moving and hissed like an angry kettle. Viv could only see a black cloud moving outward, as the spell covered the entirety of the tunnel.
More hisses.
With a torturous shriek, the two spells met. Vibrations in the mana were so strong that they made Viv’s teeth click against each other. The black curtain was still moving away.
And away.
And away.
Viv breathed out in deep relief, soon mirrored by everyone around when the spell cleared the cavern’s entrance with a light ‘pop’ and disappeared into the night. Of the lich, there were no signs for now.
“Neriad’s bollocks.”
“I could have crushed rocks between my ass cheeks.”
“I’m so getting laid after that.”
“Eeeee.”
“I think I peed a little.”
“Gor gor!”
Both humans and Yries (and one dragonette) released their accumulated anxiety in verbal form. Almost all of the temple guards sent admiring glances towards Viv, who did her very best to look cool about it. Her heart was still trying to escape her ribs and her back was soaked with cold sweat.
//Good show, Your Grace.
//But this is not over.
A few revenants were trailing lazily into the cavern, a mere trickle compared to before. Beyond that, she could hear an ominous racket. Like someone was smashing bones and meat together. The distance between Viv and the mouth of the cavern was over a hundred and fifty meters, a testament to the violence of whatever the fuck was going on.
//You may want to refill your core as much as possible.
“They’re a bit too far for efficiency.”
//Please try.
Viv did and found that, if she took her time, yoink spells were so efficient that she was indeed regaining her strength. The awakened part of her drank the mana eagerly and she soon felt the pleasant hum of her own energy coursing through ethereal veins. She was ready.
The sounds stopped and a leg like that of a giant chicken in a John Carpenter movie smashed through the tunnel opening, cracking the stone beneath its weight.
Ok, she was not ready.
What entered was an abomination unlike anything she had seen in the deadlands. While necrarchs were horrifying in a predatory sort of way, that… patchwork of rotting flesh disgusted her, and she had a solid stomach.
The creature stumbled down the tunnel. It was not fast, but gravity was on its side. Time too.
[Failed Lich—
The creature had absorbed revenants, somehow.
“Yoink.”
Viv had no choice. The very idea of absorbing mana from this abomination revolted her. She would still do it if it meant surviving.
The spell hit and started pulling, but the mana she received was limited and… tainted.
No, that was not quite right.
It was mana with meaning. She could still absorb it as its original purpose had been spent, yet the memory of it floated across her mind, whispering of a new idea.
It was change.
Change was death.
Every change carried destruction with it, and there was no upgrade, no improvement without discarded elements. To change was to lose, but not just that. Conscious change meant arbitration between options. Crossing one door meant that other doors closed, but the sacrifice was necessary in order to go from potential to reality. Change was life.
The failed lich had changed the revenants, discarding their individuality and form to wear them as armor. It was going to tank all of her spells by shedding bodies as soon as a yoink hit, or so it thought.
Stupid change was worthless.
As the concept settled in Viv’s mind, she pointed fingers at the misbegotten assembly, targeting joints. With every absorbed piece, she felt a new way of looking at black mana engraving itself into her soul, and with every new critical piece destroyed, the lich stumbled more until it crashed against the ground not twenty paces away from the barricade, unmoving.
The upper part of the lich popped out from that unholy mess like a xenomorph from a disposable crew member. Viv considered using her new power on the creature, but she remembered just in time that she was not completely stupid and that only an absolute moron or someone desperate would use an unknown weapon in a combat situation.
“Werfer.”
The flamethrower-like spell sprayed the failed lich, quickly eating through a hastily erected shield. Viv sustained the spell with all she had even as she felt coldness spread through her limbs as her core emptied. She waited until the monster stopped screeching and kept going for another second. For good measure. When the power was spent, there was nothing left but a half-hollowed blob of flesh.
Then, the entire living detachment found out that the black mana had somehow overloaded the dead tissues, thawing them, when a wave of rotten fluid sloshed against the barricade. Viv took two awkward steps backward and vomited, just like everyone else around her.