Chapter 238: Brimstone and Steel (2/2)
The best method of handling this creature is by killing the psionic master that rides its back. If you fail to do so, the beast will use advanced maneuvers against you. Once the psionic is executed, the beast's higher-level functions cease to exist, and it will attack friend and foe alike.
It poses no threat to you, however.
I smirked as I glanced at the last bit. I rolled my shoulders before dashing up towards the fray. Surrounded by the pandemonium, I found a dozen of our gialgathens having individual dog fights with the blighted ones. I rushed beside three of them. As I did, I created a gravity well over me.
Their flight paths altered into orbits around me, pulling them in. In front of each rider, I created water panels. As they crashed through them, I froze them mid-flight. These ice walls knocked the blighted riders off the blighted one's backs. With the rider and beasts separated, our troops burned them alive with vibrant, red flames.
Collapsing in towards me, the blighted ones shattered their icy, melting confinements. As they did, I poured Event Horizon over them and locked them in place. Gravity wells anchored them before I lugged them behind me like an ugly, metal sack of potatoes.
Like mobile batteries, they fueled me as I flew and helped my other soldiers. As I passed up, several of the mind mages smashed their wills against mine. Stunned for a moment, I stopped my flight, paralyzed by psionic daggers they lobbed against me.
If I was to compare them with the last mind mages, these were like hammers instead of scalpels. They aimed to smash my mind into shards, crippling me in the process. After taking their first onslaught, I retaliated in kind. Diving deep into the minds of many, a few of their thoughts sprung into my mind.
'Kill him.'
'Get that monster away from me.'
'When is Lehesion coming?'
After pulling them to me and disintegrated them with Event Horizon, I worried over that last thought. Capable as I was, I wasn't ready to face Lehesion on my own. I got back to our mission's goal. A few quick skirmishes later, our forces expunged the last of the blighted ones.
With a half dozen dying behind me, I created rock over them, melted it onto them, then froze it. Like a ball of metal and obsidian toffee, the black and metal ball disgusted me. I reared my hands apart. Clapping my hands together with all my strength, I created a shockwave that snapped them into brittle pieces. Suspending those parts, I disintegrated the dead bodies.
Turning towards the flying dreadnought, I analyzed the battlefield. Our forces tore open the hull already. They ripped out dozens of gialgathens, the inner crew left in chaos. Another wave of mind magic hit me as I stood still, but I fought it off, gritting my teeth as I did. Clasping my hands, I dashed in to help them out.
This was a circumstance I often dreaded - what if the mind mages targeted my soldiers instead of me? Turns out I shouldn't have worried. The gialgathens communicate through telepathy. In a way, two arguing gialgathens fought in a psionic battle. Though nowhere the level of these mages, our forces held their own enough for me to help.
Not crippled by the psionic offensive, we finished the crew of the dreadnought. I gained about twenty gialgathens into my storage before we flew over towards the remaining battleships.
The ice suspending the dreadnought almost caved by now. Blighted ones melted the ice with green, sickly fire and cracked it with their tails. As they unleashed their breaths, a saddening chorus erupted from the lake. It was as if the converted gialgathens lamented the twisted shadows they became.
Giving them release, Krog flew over with a squadron of gialgathens. Krog adjusted his tactics from before, keeping as much distance from them as possible. They smothered the escaping riders and blighted with their flames. The blighted ones recovered, but the riders burned alive. Even the ship itself melted under the incendiary breath.
Singeing metal and white mist covered the lake as both sides held out for victory. Our team kept the edge, so I let them be. This gave me time to face the remaining dreadnought without arcane cannons. It prepared reserve rifles that slung out plasma bolts. As I reached the ship, their guns charged with blinding light.
With a bit of creativity, I filled the barrels with dense stone. As they fired, the plasma recoiled into the ship, the cylinders ripping to shreds in a blob of blue light. The plasma ate metal as I reached out a hand, having charged enough energy for a singularity once more.
Another growing blot of darkness expanded but within the ship this time. As it released kinetic force, the metal on the outside of the hull undulated outwards, a wave creasing steel. Cores melted inside the vessel as the forcefield dampened. Without a reliable power source, it weakened.
I dashed forwards, snapping through the barrier with ease. Popping like a semi-translucent balloon, the energized tethers fell apart at the seams. Panicking, members attempted fighting along the outside of the vessel. Instead of warring with them, I used a massive wave of gravity to lob them off the sides of the ship.
Falling to their deaths, dozens of crew members howled as the pulped against the rubble below. A sickening chorus of breaking bones and ripping ribs let out from below. Dashing into the steeled vessel, I tore through the crew without mercy, yet I kept my intents focused.
I reached the factory floor for the gialgathens. Tearing through them, I used the same process as before. I sorted the gialgathens into two groups - those that could be saved and those that couldn't. Of those two, I put who I could into storage and carried the rest in a gravitational ball behind me.
After pulling them out, I regrouped with our forces coming from the other dreadnought. Like clockwork, we carried the maimed gialgathens across the sky towards the meeting point. Deep within the sewers, Spear created a spacial rend, letting us transport the gialgathens to Elderfire.
With the three dreadnoughts cleared, we raced towards the exposed bases of the once towering spires. Stored within the recesses of their roots, hybridizing gialgathens turned in the orange slop. As we came upon them, a cataclysmic eruption boomed over Astelle.
Pulling gialgathens from the pits, I turned towards the sound. Some being ripped open a portal in space-time, large enough for a city to fall through. From its depths, a gilded aura coursed out like evaporated gold. Claws large as subway trains cut into the edges of the warp, a maw of full of serrated teeth following not long after.
Lehesion arrived in full force. As his full-frame came into view, the gialgathens near us shivered with fear. Many remembered Lehesion as a saint. Having his hulking frame and enormous stature rise against us spawned terror in their chests. It seized our troop's minds, making them numb and slow.
I sent a message to our troops to retreat immediately. As I did, Lehesion rose from the warp, landing atop the island on the lake. His feet crushed entire buildings and his tail leveled city blocks. As the ground quaked under his feet, he turned towards the site of destruction. Disgust spread over his face as he viewed gialgathens fighting Hybrids.
His voice sent waves across all of Astelle,
”So my children would defy me? Perhaps you all have forgotten the age I left behind and the world I created. Allow me to remind you of what you face.”
The sky above darkened. My heart pounded in my ears as I sprinted forward. My blood charged with mana as an eclipse formed over the sun above. As the false moon devoured the sky, shade smothered the battlefield. A starry sky developed over us, as beautiful as staring at a horizon on a clear night.
A grin spread over the ancient being's face,
”Fade into memory, your bodies eaten by the light.”