Broken Lands

Chapter 379 – Echoes of a Bygone Era

Translucent Aura called the feathers that could reach the strike towards it and empowered them to resist it. Where there weren’t feathers, which was most of the path, her aura formed into plumes of opposing mana.

It wasn’t enough to stop the quick-moving ball lightning, but it was enough to blunt it so that Sophia’s Shield and armor could easily take it. It was also enough to remind Sophia that while Translucent Aura would activate reflexively if she noticed an attack aimed at her, she needed to actively manage it if she wanted to really control the mana throughout her Domain.

“I don’t know what you did, but the shieldsman is suddenly injured,” Jax called out along the mindlink. “Part of his shield is flickering; I can hit him with a lightbolt if I time it right.”

Something crystallized in Sophia’s mind as she heard his callout. She didn’t know if it was from the mana she felt moving through her Domain, Plumed Knowledge, or Fleeting Foresight; it was probably all three coming together. She spoke out loud as well as across the mindlink. “Of course, that’s why Dav’s strike didn’t take out the leader! The True Death went right past his Shield and carved out pieces of his power, but he stole enough from the shieldbearer to stay in the fight! That’s why the sword was damaged after it hit Dav, too. That means we really do need to take out the shieldbearer first, having him gone should make everyone else easier to kill.” 

She paused for long enough to glance around the atrium and place where everyone was. “Dav, Jax, can you swap targets? If Dav can separate the shield from the shieldbearer with a True Death Call, we should be able to handle the other two easily. I’ll run interference for the mage. Xin’ri, Ci’an, can you help Dav?”

Another attack flew from the mage towards Sophia as she spoke. This time, she was aware of it and corralled it with her plumes before deliberately taking it on her Arcane Scales instead of letting it splash on her Shield. It was harder to do, but Dav might need that Shield and her Arcane Scales were just as good at handling magic as their description implied.

She couldn’t send instructions to Arak easily, so she’d just have to hope that he caught what was going on. That just left Taika. “Arak, too, if you hear me. Taika, do you think you can help Jax? The swordsman’s the only one with eyes.”

“He has eyes but he doesn’t react to illusions at all,” Taika grumbled in response. “I’ll keep blocking the shieldbearer’s suggestions that attacking his shield is the best way to break it, instead.”

Sophia hadn’t caught on to that particular trick. With Taika blocking it, it probably wasn’t important enough to the fight for Fleeting Foresight to pull her attention to it; it wasn’t impacting the fight other than keeping Taika busy, and that was Taika’s job.

“I’ll be fine on my own,” Jax shoved his shield into the shieldbearer’s, pushing him back what would have been a step if he had any feet. “Xin’ri, move me now!”

“On it,” Xin’ri called out. Jax seemed to slide from his position in front of the shieldbearer to near the swordsman like a visual artifact. Sophia knew that was an effect of the semiautonomous armor he wore; it was light-based and seemed to be tied into his Item Anchor / Light Signature Mask, but the handful of special features that had to be triggered were all either triggered by itself or by Xin’ri, since it was really her creation. It did a good job of making Jax’s Mask seem like it was third upgrade, at least.

Dav was only a little slower. He’d have been faster if he used his teleportation, but the swordsman hadn’t yet swapped targets to Jax and it would simply have left him open. Instead, he flitted up to near the glass ceiling as easily as if he were running on even ground, then looped around the spot above the swordsman to land softly behind the shieldbearer.

“My Vision Abilities don’t work well on the shieldbearer,” Ci’an reported a moment later. “I’m not sure why. I’ll take the swordsman with Jax.”

Sophia was less happy about that miss, but she couldn’t really blame Fleeting Foresight for not knowing the headless shieldbearer was immune to Ci’an’s Nightowl Abilities. They’d worked on things without heads before, and she was useful in either position. It also took her only a moment to find the issue and swap targets.

It was a good reminder that despite how useful Fleeting Foresight was, it didn’t tell her everything.

Sophia didn’t have time for more analysis than that when the swordsman turned his lightning field on the entire atrium. Most of it was wasted, of course, incinerating nothing more than stone, but Sophia was kept busy protecting her allies. Her Arcane Scales could take the spell, and Xin’ri had several different elemental shields, but of the others only Dav had a way to completely protect himself and using it required Calling the lightning instead of Sophia’s True Death. He couldn’t do both at the same time.

The lightning didn’t affect either the shieldbearer or the sorceress. They had to be linked in some way. Sophia already knew that, of course; if they weren’t linked, the shieldbearer wouldn’t be able to take on the swordsman’s injuries.

When the mage called down flaming balls of molten rock to cover the atrium, falling from just below the glass ceiling, Sophia was far too busy to pay attention to anything else. She found out she wasn’t nearly immune to those when one of them struck her and burned straight through her Arcane Scales before she managed to shove it away. She could still deflect and suppress them with her Translucent Aura, especially in small areas, but now she had to pay at least some attention to dodging as well as protecting her teammates.

She vaguely heard excited shouting from the direction of the shieldbearer, but it wasn’t until the flaming rock rain stopped that she was able to take a moment to see where the battle stood.

First of all, she was below half of her mana pool. She’d dumped a tremendous amount of mana through her aura in the past minute or so; it was probably the fastest she’d spent mana in her life. It was worth it, though; all of her allies were still up and moving around. She was certain several had painful burns like her own, but the chances were good that no one had anything worse. 

Second, the lightning had also vanished. The swordsman was fighting Jax in a proper duel. His side and hand were back and he wielded a sword, but a chunk was missing from the sword. Sophia was pretty sure the missing piece was the bit where he hit Dav while Dav was Calling True Death. Jax seemed to have an advantage; while he wasn’t moving quite as quickly as the swordsman, he didn’t have to. He was able to block or deflect most of the swordsman’s strikes with his shield. Sophia was pretty sure he was being cautious and defensive because he knew he wasn’t alone; there was no reason to take a risk to win when they’d win without it.

The shieldbearer had vanished; only his shield was left behind. The sorceress was similarly missing, though she’d left her empty robe as well as her staff.

The swordsman slashed wildly at Jax, who stepped backwards out of the way. He didn’t stop, which told Sophia that Ci’an was doing her best to disrupt the fight and make it easier. Shadows rose around the man’s feet, then fixed him in place as Sophia felt yet another draw on her mana to replace the True Death around Dav. 

She couldn’t see Dav anywhere, but she could feel him: he was on the other side of the swordsman, hidden by the dueling pair.

A moment later, Dav’s sword separated the swordsman’s head from his body. He disappeared and his armor clanged to the tiled floor. Sophia stared at it as the tension running through her system flipped over to exhaustion. 

“We shouldn’t have won,” Sophia said heavily, her eyes on the breastplate with an emblem of a sword descending from a tower. Plumed Knowledge was telling her just what they’d fought, and it was far nastier than she’d thought was possible for a location this shallow in the Maze. “They were fourth upgrade when they stopped here. I don’t know what happened to make them into monsters, but it weakened them until they were only near the peak of the third upgrade. We were lucky to win.”

“We weren’t lucky,” Dav countered. He started to glow a soft green as he walked over to her. “We worked for every bit of that kill. Oh, and before you get too wound up about how hard it was, it’s Embodied, not Called, these days.”

He winked at Sophia and she surprised herself with a laugh. She wasn’t sure why that was funny; maybe it was the tension of the fight. There certainly couldn’t be any other reason that a wink and the reminder that his Ability was called Immanent Embodiment after the third upgrade instead of Eldritch Call should be funny.

It made her feel better, so there was that in its favor.

“So what else do you know about them?” Ci’an tossed the shield next to the breastplate. “I can tell they’re affiliated with the Kestii Empire somehow, the symbol of the tower makes that clear.”

Sophia shook her head. “All I know is that they’re Echoes of a Bygone Era.” 

The name came from Cliff, who was gleefully building new encounter combinations in the back of Sophia’s awareness. He was usually quieter than that, but the prospect of being able to build an encounter where the monsters could support each other directly and even share damage was apparently far too exciting to work on quietly.

“They were once far more than that,” a voice spoke from the far end of the atrium. “Ysalix Kestii, Felicia Stormcrow, and Marvin Skold were the only survivors of the final expedition to the highest remaining level of the Kestii Tower. They were sent to discover and eliminate the cause of the Maze’s spread and decided that the cause was the Tower itself. This was not an unusual belief at the time, however misguided it was. Once they set in motion the fall of the Tower, they retreated here to wait for the disappearance of the Maze. As you have no doubt noticed, that never happened.”

Sophia glanced around carefully. Only two things had changed at the far end of the atrium: an open door had appeared in the glass wall and the pillar of crystal behind it glowed with an internal light. “Ansuz?”

“Yes,” the facility-mind answered. “And you must be Sophia. I can guess who most of the rest of you are, all but the Shadow-Healer.”

Sophia glanced towards Arak. 

He had a puzzled look on his face as he glanced back and forth between Sophia, Ansuz, and the pile of equipment on the ground. “Ysalix Kestii?”

“The fourth son of the sixth Emperor of Kestii,” Ansuz answered. “First of the Emperor’s children to make it to the fourth upgrade and therefore the heir apparent to the Empire. Possibly the Emperor Himself for a short time; he could not destroy the Tower without the Emperor’s authority, and that was something his father never granted. He believed his father dead when he arrived here; that is all I can say for certain. I was unable to receive news from outside after that until recently.”