John was on his last leg, almost literally. In the past couple minutes, his situation had gone from dire to hopeless. Salamander had been taken out first. Out of mana and options, the endfla elental had engaged into lee. One misstep later and she had been confined and torn apart by several of the Lorylim. Siena had found her end soon thereafter, in a similar fashion. Third had been Sylph, who was first hit by a stray projectile and then trampled. In an attempt to help her, Beatrice had gotten herself in an isolated position and followed after holding her position on her own for a solid minute. Gno had been buried under the subsequent tide of bodies and died just a few seconds ago.
Now it was only John, tra, and Undine. He was alive because the strategy was to protect him, tra was alive thanks to her Astrotium armour and Undine was alive because she was still infused into Purgatory. John was low on HP, out of mana, and still getting the ticking damage from Thana’s aura. Deploying Stirwin was the last lifeline he could pull, but there hadn’t been enough of a charge to make that worthwhile. ‘Can we make a run for it?’ tra asked. If there was any benefit to their diminished group size, it was that both him and tra had the ability to teleport. There was no one left abandoned if they turned tail now.
‘I don’t know,’ the Gar told her. They had made a dent in the enemy’s forces, but more than half still remained, attached to that vile Swarmhost that kept empowering them with blood. Those trees were also why John had no definitive answer, as more branches had grown out and obscured vision of the outside. ‘Not like we have a choice though,’ he added, as the Lorylim charge continued.
John teleported once, then used Skitterstep to throw off the pursuers. He repeated that process two more tis, bridging a sixty-tre distance in two seconds, and found himself outside the confines of the trees. He didn’t look back and started running. tra used his vision to open her own portal, spending her last mana.
Unsurprisingly, they found themselves among a crowd of Lorylim hosts. The good news was that these ones weren’t part of the amalgam’s swarm. Slower by a huge margin, the Gar and the First of Wrath could dodge their attacks with minimal effort and keep running. They weren’t quite sure where to, but anywhere was better than there.
There was a distinct rumbling behind and under them. Doubtlessly the Swarmhost was on the chase. Where the subterranean main body burrowed itself through the earth, its attached organisms followed the survivors over earth and pavent. The sounds of their maddened moans ca closer and closer, no matter how much John pushed his body.
“[Intimidation]”
The negative sound carved itself into John’s perception, just as the intense weirdness washing over him caused him to shudder uncontrollably. He dared look over his shoulder, seeing Nia stand before the swarm of Lorylim, straight and staring them down. As if pushed back by a magnetic field, the creatures refused to advance any closer toward her.
“Delaying the inevitable,” Thana comnted, still following them and watching from a close distance.
John didn’t care if she was right or not, the relief he felt both at the montary safety and seeing the pariah was imnse. He would have kept running, since that was clearly the intended strategy, if it hadn’t been for the pillar of tar exploding before him, branching out into a teeth-thorned bramble wall. He and tra instead retreated to Nia’s position, as the other Lorylim encircled them.
“Magus Step?” Nia asked.
“I’ll have two in a couple of seconds, we’ll see how far that gets .”
“I see.”
“You can return from the other side, right?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you should fade here then.”
“Yes.”
“…Will you?”
“No.”
John clenched his jaw and fists. He wasn’t done fighting yet, but their chances of victory were practically non-existent. “It’ll take a miracle,” he mumbled. The intimidating aura shrunk. His instincts cheered at that fact, but his mind knew that this was their last lifeline. “Anything up your sleeves?”
“Can you conveniently summon an ocean?” tra asked, half joking.
“Would have done it earlier, if I thought that was an option.”
“Then I’m out of options.”
“If we can run, I found a potentially safe destination,” Nia said.
“Seriously?”
“About a kilotre further west.”
The Lorylim crawled a little bit closer. John glanced up at Thana, who growled and fidgeted on top of a broken wall. As unhappy as the goddess of genocide was, she also seed determined to suppress all inclinations to help them. The aura shrunk a little bit further. Then John saw sothing move in his periphery. A vast writhing massing and a streak of golden and funky light. The latter approached much faster than the forr. Then the streak was suddenly there.
John noticed the changes to his girlfriend imdiately. The overt ones, like the claws of hard-light on her left hand and the geotric shapes shining through her arm, and the supple ones, like her cat ears being blue rather than the usual, transformation-induced copper. His mind raced to the obvious conclusion, fusion with Copernicus, only to hear her say, “Ya seem to be in a pickle, tiger,” in a voice and tone completely unchanged.
“Just… how?” the eclipse elental wanted to know.
“The power of friendship, duh,” Rave said and winked.
User Comments
0 comments from readers