Broken Lands

Chapter 376 – Ghosts in the Atrium

The man inside the armor seemed indistinct, even ghostly, but he quickly solidified into a pale young man with a sharp chin and somewhat ragged long hair; the top of it was pulled back into a soft bun. He shouted again and his eyes flashed a pure white. “Answer my call, you who have taken my power! Rid my sanctum of these intruders! The Tower must fall!”

Color drained from his already pale face and light yellow hair, leaving him with an even more ghostly appearance than before. Lightning crackled from the hilt of the broken blade. The blade seemed to shine with an inner light that turned into mist, which concentrated at the break and then rushed to form the rest of the sword. Mist spilled from the blade, then seemed to condense around the angry specter. The blade’s lightning cut bright paths through the mist as it spread rapidly through the atrium.

An answer came from the deep mist to the far left. “The Tower must fall.”

The sound of metal striking stone followed, then cloth lightly hit the stone and a shape became visible through the mist that covered the distance. It seemed to descend steps; Sophia hadn’t realized there were stairs there, but she now realized they existed. It only made sense; there had to be a way to get up to higher levels in the building. She’d expected them to be behind doors, but they weren’t.

Sophia sent a thought out along the mental link that included everyone except Arak Shade. “Should we interrupt?”

“Get ready but don’t attack yet,” Dav answered. “We should be able to do that much without amplifying things, if this is a zone where that happens.”

It turned out that the Hunger wasn’t the only monster that reacted differently based on what you did; it was simply the first one they saw. With a setup like the one they saw now, there were two major options if they didn’t interrupt: they would either attack one at a time or they would attempt to coordinate. Since they were spread out, attacking individually seemed likely, as long as they didn’t piss off the apparent leader by trying to get an early advantage.

If they did try, the odds were that not only would they all retaliate immediately, including any that hadn’t yet shown up, the leader would probably also summon more. They might have to fight those additional enemies eventually, but fighting them all at once in a large area was not preferable. Not when the enemies were certain to be at the third upgrade.

Sophia was pretty sure they’d win no matter what. It was less obvious on the leader, but the robes were almost certainly a construct, ghost, or spirit of some sort. That meant they fell into the easiest category for Sophia to help her team deal with: creatures that were heavily injured by True Death.

The metal staff that hit each step was visible first, followed by a brightly colored set of robes that seemed to cover a woman’s body. A large pendant anchored the base of the hood, but the hood was empty; there was no one actually in the robes. A black glove gripped the staff, but the other sleeve was empty and filled only with shadows even as it reached forward as though an arm still filled it. 

“I answer the call.” The robes stopped two steps beyond the base of the stairs.

With a mage as the primary threat, Sophia pulled feathers from her Hoard out but did not take their form; magic was by far the best way to counter that particular defense so she was better off staying in her own shape for now. Ci’an was somewhere above, complaining about a complete lack of rafters, while Xin’ri pulled out the few semi-intelligent fighting tools she’d made that weren’t on Jax and Jax and two versions of Dav moved forward slowly, placing themselves between the team and the rest of the atrium. Both Jax and Dav already had their summonable gear ready, so there was little for them to prepare.

Sophia wasn’t certain where Arak went; he couldn’t report his position as easily as her team could. Based on both their plans and what they’d done in the past, though, he was somewhere in the shadows, watching what happened and prepared to either intervene or shadow-speak to whoever needed to shift their position. He’d have the best view of anyone other than Ci’an, and he was far better at calling out adjustments than the nightowl.

“I answer the call. The Tower must fall,” a second voice echoed from the other side of the room. 

Sophia whipped around to see the most obvious specter yet: an empty suit of armor that floated above the ground rather than walking. Its lower half ended at about the knee level in tattered darkness. Other than that, however, its armor seemed to be in good shape and it carried a shield that had only a few deep scratches and a couple of indentations marring its surface. It had clearly been used, but it seemed completely functional and the pale tree it bore was still completely clear.

Unlike the spellcaster, the shield-bearing warrior continued to glide forward. Sophia hoped that meant they would face the enemies individually, but that was not to be. The leader who summoned the pair of spectral minions shouted for them to strike as his lightning spread from the individual flashes to fill the room.

Sophia hadn’t expected the person who could unleash a magical attack on the entire atrium to be the swordsman, but that seemed to be the case.

Fortunately, it was an attack that was just as easy to counter as the swordsman seemed to find it easy to unleash; at least four of them could handle a wide-area magical assault directly. Ci’an and Taika could only respond indirectly, but when they worked with the rest of the group that didn’t matter. Sophia wasn’t certain about Arak; she hadn’t seen him take care of an attack like that, but that could easily be because he’d never needed to.

This time, it was Jax’s turn - well, Jax’s turn to use one of Xin’ri’s creations specifically tuned for his Mask. It was always Jax’s turn when the attack had a significant visual effect and lightning’s power to temporarily blind definitely counted. Jax could have handled the assault without her help if he unMasked, but they were still trying to preserve his role in front of Arak Shade.

Jax lifted his glowing shield and a dome appeared over the group. Sophia wasn’t certain Ci’an or Arak Shade were within it, but both of them could handle themselves. The force field glowed brighter as it blocked the lightning, bleeding off the energy in a carefully managed light show while partially recovering the mana it required to cast the shield. The technique was apparently common in Abilities but difficult to implement in items, which helped to sell the idea that it was one of Jax’s Abilities instead of one of Xin’ri’s items controlled through Jax’s Mask.

Sophia didn’t wait for anyone else now that the battle had started; she didn’t need to. She pushed her aura and the feathers it carried out to the entire Arena. It was immensely larger than she’d once been able to manage, but the area she could cover had grown with levels, upgrades, and practice. It was hard to tell which was the most impactful; while the upgrades had the biggest immediate effect, the area Sophia could reach grew more between upgrades than during any of them.

Her latest upgrade was the largest, but it was still dwarfed by the other factors. What wasn’t small in comparison was the sheer level of control her Grand Talent gave her. Sophia started by pushing True Death throughout her aura. Everything magical would be touched by True Death; things carrying the mark of her plume would carry far more, but any little bit helped. It would weaken the spells and defenses of their opponents while boosting the effectiveness of her allies’ every action. 

There were odd swirls in her Domain near the shieldbearer’s shield, almost like it was trying to pull everything to itself. Sophia guessed that was probably exactly what it did; it was a very useful sort of Ability for a shield. All it meant for Sophia’s Domain was that she was able to cover a smaller area than normal, because of the way her Domain followed her Aura. Sophia sent a warning to the others, in case it mattered. It was the most likely to be important to Xin’ri, Ci’an, and Taika.

Both Davs dove for the spellcaster, bounding up into the air in different arcs to come at her from different sides. They’d found that the way his particular Ability set let him move unpredictably and become temporarily immune to almost any spell even without Sophia’s help made him particularly good at handling enemies that specialized in weaponized mana. 

Jax was the opposite; he was slower, but his upgraded lightblade could bypass many defenses; all it had to destroy was Shield and after that the creature’s hide would not help it much. Armor like what the shieldbearer wore worked better and the shield would probably be better yet, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was that he could keep the shieldbearer busy while everyone else went after the important one, the leader. 

It was almost certainly the inverse of the strategy the opposing group was supposed to use; if the shieldbearer could hold off the spellcasters, their spellcaster would be free to wreak havoc on Sophia’s team. They weren’t about to allow that.

A long, thin spike flew from behind Sophia towards the still-sparking leader. Shortly before it passed well over the shieldbearer’s head, it dipped and started to fall quickly before bouncing off the shield. It didn’t look like he’d ever moved it to catch the bolt; it simply attracted the spike so strongly that it was completely pulled off course.

That was obviously a test from Xin’ri, because what followed wasn’t another spike of any sort. Instead, it was a bolt of fire that flew from Xin’ri towards the glass ceiling. It stopped well short of the ceiling but managed to be far closer to the leader than the shieldbearer when it burst like fireworks into a handful of smaller flaming rocks that flew downwards quickly, far faster than from gravity alone.

None of them hit anyone, but as far as a proof of concept went, it was probably a success. Xin’ri had found a way she could affect the leader if she could hit; she simply needed to stay out of the range where the shieldbearer could affect spells. It was far smaller than Sophia’s range, which gave Sophia the clue she needed.

She didn’t need to worry about the shieldbearer as long as she initiated her attack from a feather near the leader. It would make the origin more obvious, which wasn’t great, but preventing the shieldbearer from blocking her spells was useful.

The only question was if she should instead try to suppress the shieldbearer instead of killing the leader. Jax could - and was - holding him off physically, but he didn’t have a way to handle the attractive effect of his shield. She directed the question at Xin’ri and Ci’an, since they were probably the most affected. “Should I try to stop the shieldbrearer’s attraction?”

“Not for me,” Ci’an answered with an amused and proud note in her mind-voice. “I’ve seen stuff like that before, it doesn’t affect visual attacks at all. There’s a reason the lightning-blade hasn’t done anything else yet. He thinks he has. It’s one of the reasons Nightowls are so powerful, we’re very hard to stop.”

“I can work around it.” Xin’ri sounded focused. It almost sounded like she was enjoying the challenge. “Better I do that than pull you off the leader. See if you can do something about the sword; I don’t like the way it changed when he called the others.”