ImmovableMage
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223 Thunderstruck
🕑 Added 2025-01-11 00:00:01 +0000 UTC– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 219, Season of the Setting Sun, Day 18 –
Not long ago, the mid-sized town had celebrated their liberation from the Lich Kingdoms’ occupation, but now the screams were echoing through the streets and they were thrown into the depths of hell again.
Half of the city had been reshaped into a massive dome blocking the army’s advance on ground that later collapsed right onto the heads of the forces daring to land behind.
A pair of parents was desperately running with their children in their arms to flee the scene when a nearby building collapsed from a stray spell. Both parents crouched down and tried to block the debris and protect their children with their own bodies, fully knowing that it would probably not be enough.
A flash of light caused their closed eyelids to light up orange in their vision…
The dreaded impact never arrived.
“Run!” shouted Jorg, who had blinked into their path and activated a barrier to block the falling building. “Put the children onto the big kitty and run!” He examined the falling debris and then used a wand to cast Immovable Object on a central piece to lessen the strain on his barrier.
The parents stared at the dwarf and then at the strange lynx, who was extremely dirty and carried a rope-harness. When looking closely, it was still possible to detect traces of white and purple markings beneath the dried mud on the feline’s fur.
“Snap out of it!” barked Jorg. “Otherwise, I’ll have to take you all to the shadows, and that’s currently not a place I would recommend passing through if you can help it.”
The parents didn’t manage to muster a response, but hurriedly did as instructed. They placed their two young children onto what they assumed to be a trained beast and secured the ropes tightly.
“Is this…?” The mother flinched when the beast unleashed a translucent purple shield around itself and its two riders.
“Run! DAMN IT!” shouted Jorg. He had already been forced to waste more mana by creating another barrier for fear that the first would break soon. He couldn’t afford to waste any more mana or time here. He still had to get to others.
Refusing to wait for the parents, Muttonchops dashed forward and nimbly navigated the besieged streets under Siling’s remote guidance. Seeing their children riding forth on a strange beast finally shook the parents out of their daze and they rushed after them with ragged breaths.
“Finally,” sighed Jorg. He immediately stepped into the shadows to avoid having the building collapse on himself when the barrier ran out of mana. As soon as he entered, he received a voice transmission from Patricia. [Second district third block. A small group has slipped by Lori and the death hunters. Don’t linger around too long. We’re vastly outnumbered here.]
“I know, I know…” muttered Jorg while hurriedly using quickened Blink spells to cross directly towards the area where he was most needed. With so many vampires against them, stepping into the shadow plane was a risk, but the benefit of directly cutting through areas that held buildings in the normal plane was simply too much of a time save to pass up.
Blinding lightning pierced through the darkness of the shadow realm, while a blur of metal cleaved through a pair of unprepared vampires. Jorg could only smile wryly. Vastly outnumbered they might be, but he almost pitied the foolish vampires that believed that would be enough to get past Tiana and her lightning double.
Jorg was still amazed that Tiana managed to not only master the two long spears in the dual style of his family including barriers, but also used her demonic transformation to power a magnetic inscription provided by his aunt to fluently split the pole and to send parts of it flying around herself and using the momentary change in battle pace to retrieve preloaded crossbows to shoot enchanted bolts into someone’s vampiric face.
Even though Jorg liked his gadgets and had learned to appreciate the complexity of runic inscriptions, he still preferred his equipment more straightforward than whatever the heck Tiana was wielding or switching through. Flexibility was nice, but focus felt better to him.
Jorg arrived at his location and stepped out of the shadows just in time to block the advance of three vampires aiming to flank Elena and Vess, who were leading the bulk of the citizens to a safer location.
[Got you covered.] Miguel’s voice echoed in Jorg’s mind just when a quick succession of arrows arrived for the vampires. [More coming from the west. Maximilian is quickly flying an injured girl to Elena.]
Jorg frowned. That left Miguel without airborne mobility. Why did his friend always insist on setting himself up for trouble? With friends like Miguel and a brother like Terry, Jorg got the feeling he would live a life of endless worries.
[Don’t worry.] Miguel already suspected what his friend was thinking. [I got Peekaboo to watch me with Siling ready to switch in.]
Jorg was still frowning, but nodded. He still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for Siling to use her soul spirits like this. Or at all, really.
When the forces came close, they had met another husk – a small rodent this time. The creature used its tiny claws to scratch a message for Siling into the earth. The message warned Siling not to use her soul spirits, but with no explanation.
Jorg questioned the intentions behind the message from the Spirited Duchess, but Siling chose to trust her sister. That being said, his elven friend was unwilling to surrender her most powerful abilities for such a chaotic battle.
After some discussion, they guessed that the intent behind the message might simply be for Siling to not show her soul spirits to the enemy, because it could invite suspicion if the Spirited Duchess didn’t take out Siling’s soul spirits.
Siling compromised by not using her flashier soul spirits, like Wingman and Furball the Second, and taking rudimentary means to hide the nature of her other pets, while still being able to use her location switching.
[I don’t think we need to worry about the vampires pursuing Elena’s group anymore,] said Miguel in an amused tone.
Jorg furrowed his brow, but before he could ask, he could already hear the devastation of buildings collapsing, and rock projectiles flying everywhere.
[Siling just switched Lori in,] explained Miguel with a chuckle.
[I figured,] said Jorg. [Then I’ll head to the next checkpoint.]
[Good hunting,] said Miguel. [I’ll keep myself busy shooting bats from the sky.]
[What’s the current estimated time of arrival?] Jorg sent a voice transmission to Siling.
[Not much longer…]
Jorg nodded with a grin. He would be glad when this was over, but he had to admit he was looking forward to the entrance of his brother and the others.
***
“My mistress…” The elven vampiress knelt on one knee without daring to look at the perfect being in front of her. “The Magebane is decimating the husks.”
“Annoying…” The Bloody Duchess rolled her eyes. They had not expected that the Magebane would make an appearance this far from the Freedom Cooperative, but there was nothing she could do about it.
They had already dispatched the Spirited Duchess from this battle and ordered her back towards their primary target. The Magebane was an unconquerable predator to the Unholy Soul, and it was too risky to keep her here. If they dared to deploy the Magebane in this location, then they had to be reminded what would happen to their precious city dwellers without him.
The Bloody Duchess flicked a hand to signal the four vampiresses to lower her palanquin so that she could emerge. It was always important to let her lovelies run wild so that she could see whom to reward and whom to punish – whatever they preferred – but the mission of the Unholy Duchesses was too important for the Bloody Duchess to stay on the sidelines while the Magebane was here.
The appearance of the Magebane implied the appearance of the Spellcrusher and that was a pair she didn’t want to let rampage among her lovelies with impunity.
The Bloody Duchess licked her lips. The Spellcrusher might make a delightful addition to her collection. She smirked and strolled forward.
This was always her favorite moment in battle. It was time to make her grand entrance.
To her intense dismay, she didn’t get to enjoy her planned performance, because right at this moment, explosions were ranging out behind her. “Who dares?!” She glared but didn’t detect any life or mana signature even though flashes of tall humanoid shapes were tearing through their carriages and back lines.
“Mistress! Up there!” The elven vampiress pointed at the sky, where a gigantic dimensional portal opened the gates to hell.
From one moment to the other, volcanic thunder crashed down into the center of her main force of vampires. The gate only lasted for a moment under the strain of the forbidden zone’s unruly power, but it was enough to unleash havoc and destruction on the Lich Kingdoms’ forces.
The Bloody Duchess’s face contorted with shock and rage. She cursed whoever had angered a dimensional mage capable of anchored spatial transfer. She had heard their advance force mentioning an elven woman with the scent of space magic, but according to their intelligence reports, that elf had stayed out of direct conflict.
“Mistress!” A dwarven vampiress basically fell out of the shadows and stared at her beautiful leader with despair. “We’re being overrun in the shadows! The shadows are getting locked by skilled shadow users and the entire plane is flooded with cultists using holy fire and light!”
The Bloody Duchess snarled. “Get the forces of the Risen Duchess to the fugitives! We’ll—”
“Mistress!” A human vampiress fell out of the sky. “Our flank is overrun by undead!”
“Nonsense!” The Bloody Duchess glared at the new arrival. “We’re the rulers of undead!” But then she smelled their rotten stench and sensed their death aura mana. A large group of undead they hadn’t brought. “Whisperers.”
The Bloody Duchess turned to one of her messengers. “Get the death aura creatures away from there. We have lost a lot of whisperers and we cannot afford to lose control to—” She stopped herself when she saw the flag of the large ship roam over the ocean-less area. “They dared to bring the Whisperer?!”
The Bloody Duchess cursed whoever had sent the Risen Duchess on another mission. Their empire might be the true ruler of death, but that didn’t mean she could contest that particular individual for the rule of death aura creatures. With the Whisperer’s arrival, all the forces the Risen Duchess had dispatched with them instantly turned into a liability.
The Bloody Duchess changed her order. “Abandon the death aura creatures within the outer perimeter. Have all the others gather and move to assault the evacuation attempts and collect hostages. We only need a few to let the Hounds take it from there.”
She turned to the next messenger while the closest death aura creatures piled in. “Take this and get our constructs ready to blow up on my order. Let them come and…” She involuntarily paused when she noticed something strange.
Wasn’t the fire in that death knight’s eyes slightly different from that of the others?
Being the center of the Bloody Duchess’s gaze was too much, even for Logan, and he decided he had gathered enough information. He summoned a bow of mana and fired at the duchess’s messengers before allowing himself to be whisked away by the Spellcrusher.
As was customary in his old village, Logan made sure to carefully present his middle finger to the pretentious noble before his departure.
“What the—” Before the Bloody Duchess could finish her curse, a dimensional portal opened in front of her. She hurriedly unsealed her amulet to let the anti-magic destroy the dimensional portal before it could blast her with volcanic thunder.
Her eyes opened wide when finding another gate right behind the first one. This second gate showed nothing but a cloudy sky. Only when the clouds darkened and rumbled did she notice the growing speck falling towards her.
An extending orange pole brought a glowing spear-head to the other side of the dimensional gate and no second later, the heaven’s fury raged straight from high above the sky which was right in her line of sight.
The Bloody Duchess barely avoided the worst by transforming her body into blood after failing to step into the shadows. She forced her blood into the earth as fast as she could, but didn’t avoid the damage completely.
The Bloody Duchess sensed the accursed Guardian of the Freedom Cooperative. The man was basically falling through the gate. He quickly reoriented himself to the changed direction of gravity with a rotation and divine layers of mana.
At the end of his rotation, Terry double stomped a divine hammer towards the duchess’s face. He could already sense her mana moving incredibly fast and he pushed himself to match her speed by setting up a tight disruption domain around himself.
Fortunately, Terry wasn’t supposed to extend it too far.
Not yet.
Lightning cracked behind the Bloody Duchess while she was avoiding the divine hammer. She barely twisted her blood out of the way of Chadwick’s attack, but failed to predict what came next.
Chadwick’s powerful lightning bolt met Terry’s spearhead and unleashed a dense net of lightning that was much harder for the vampiress to avoid.
The full blast of lightning into the center of her blood-transformation forced her to reemerge with her corporeal body in a rather disheveled state.
Terry didn’t let the moment go and hurled a well-placed divine hammer blow onto the duchess’s chin. He knew that the mighty vampiress was too tough for such a blow to matter, but it still felt satisfying to smash that face in.
Also, Terry had to promise Ruby to get a good punch in for her against the Bloody Duchess to secure the cooperation of the Thanatos soldiers for the current counter-offensive.
That was a promise Terry gladly fulfilled, even if it was to Thanatos.
The leading figure of the Lich Kingdoms’ forces looked a lot less elegant now than her reputation had made it seem. Her expression only worsened when the sky became filled with flying hunters and channelers of the Bright Lady.
If that had not been enough to sour her mood completely, then the Spellcrusher assassinating one of her strongest commanders surely pushed her over the edge.
“You’ll pay for this!” The Bloody Duchess snarled at Terry. The bastard had been an unexpectedly pesky obstacle in their invasion, and to see him here was beyond infuriating. She crushed a crystal and was ready to let herself be transported to their point of retreat, but she found herself surprisingly stationary.
“I don’t think he’s going to let you go that easily,” said Terry amusedly. They had debated how to deal with potential dimensional magic or escape artifacts. After locking down the shadows and conquering the skies, dimensional magic was the biggest worry for dealing with the Bloody Duchess.
Terry’s intense oscillating disruption domain was one option, but that would obstruct spellwork as well. With all the spell power they had brought, sabotaging spellwork would sabotage themselves, especially after their volcanic thunder ambush eradicated most of the enemies’ mages.
The Bloody Duchess was hardly an opponent to be underestimated when it came to physical power – at least considering her vampiric regeneration, and crippling their own magic appeared less than ideal.
The anti-magic of the Spellcrusher was another option, but that would tie the mage up completely to the Bloody Duchess, given how precise anti-magic had to be. The large area of effect magic, which was another of Amelia’s specialties, would have been entirely wasted. Worse, certain magic items were unlikely to be countered fast enough with anti-magic spellwork.
In the end, it was Ying who had insisted on being allowed to take on the role, in addition to everything else he was tasked with. Their role was simply to keep the vampiress in the pocket of locked space until he was done setting up all their dimensional gates.
Terry would never forget the look in Ying’s eyes when he talked about dealing with the Bloody Duchess. He thought he had seen the man enraged before when the Divine Division had attacked Syn City, but even that was incomparable to the wrath burning in the vampiric eyes on this day.
Today, the Bloody Duchess would see another meaning to her title.
Defeating her was never really a question.
Not with all the forces they had brought here.
In the distance, a new kind of lightning rained down from the sky, which told Terry that the gate to the Elemental Tower had been placed. He couldn’t help but grin. This was probably the first battle against the Lich Kingdoms’ invasion when their side truly and utterly outnumbered the invading force.
The blood-curdling cry of a banshee reverberated in the distance to strike fear into a group of unsuspecting vampires.
Terry reminded himself to fight without bursting beyond the limits he had established back in the folded space – limits that should be a safe lower bound of what he was allowed before breaking a spatial lock given his advancements in mana foundation – and he walked forth with his king spear grasped tightly.
If he didn’t know about the reputation of the Bloody Duchess, Terry would almost take pity on her. His ma had once joked that there were three foremost rules for survival:
Don’t piss off the magic sovereigns.
Don’t piss off the dimensional mages.
Don’t piss off Aunt Brynn.
The Bloody Duchess had violated two of the three rules at once, and then some.
Terry wasn’t sure if they could truly kill or catch her, but he didn’t have the slightest doubt that today the Bloody Duchess would be defeated.
No, not just defeated.
Today, this mighty figure of the Lich Kingdoms and a symbol of their renewed expansion would be completely and utterly crushed.
That would surely sting.
Perhaps even more than the loss of all their forces today.
Terry derived a grim satisfaction from knowing that perhaps for the first time since he had raced to face the undead horde, their side appeared truly in control. The arrival of his aunt had fortified their defense, but the arrival of Ying was finally bringing a new scale to the mobility of their counter-offense.
***
When Ying personally arrived on the scene, he unleashed nightmarish fury on the remaining vampires, still organized enough to coordinate in small groups.
Purple hands were grasping all around the battlefield to drag the ghosts of their fallen comrades to fight the Lich Kingdoms’ soldiers.
Skeletal warriors rose from the earth and grabbed hold of the vampires to make sure they couldn’t run.
The few that dared to flee into the sky were pierced by arcane lances before even the mobile combat support troops had a chance to aim their spells.
Every fallen vampire rose again as skeletal warriors imbued with the yellow flames of Syn.
Group by group, Ying teleported across the battlefield to eradicate the Lich Kingdom vermin while also helping to position the others and allowing his shadow panther soul spirit to hunt down the few stragglers together with the allied martialists.
The usually calm-mannered man was pushing so much mana through his channels for casting large-scale magic that his blood vessels were beginning to show.
He didn’t care.
He had left his calm and sense of self-preservation in Syn City. It was lost the moment Ying had heard that the daughter he had grieved for nearly two decades was still alive.
They had dared to put their vile claws on Siyu.
They had dared to threaten Siling.
They would pay.
If it was the last thing he did, they would pay.
They would pay, and Siyu would finally live her life with the freedom Ying as her father owed her.
***
Comments
Storyhunter
I like the ying getting to play a belated version of the dad in taken. The phone speech in that movie. .. "I have a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you." The speech continues but the meme applies. The lich Kingdom doesn't want ransom but they have his daughter..... And a nightmare for them has awoken.
Sesharan
Hurrah for a fantastic beatdown! And yet, I find myself more worried about the Spirit Duchess being dispatched back towards their “primary target”, which is presumably the city. I hope sufficient defenses were left back there.
