Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Erick stumbled out of his room, screaming, “Where the fuck is everyone!”

Strips of lightorb gripped the edges of everywhere, shining sunlight onto orange stone.

And a body. Large, grey armor, Teressa. No head. Red blood everywhere. Head must be somewhere—

Two bodies. Bluescaled Poi, surrounded by his own lake of red.

Poi was dead.

Erick screamed, “JANE!” He ran through the hall—

Poi coughed and Erick rounded on him.

His rod of [Treat Wounds]! Erick rushed back into his room and grabbed the rod from the dresser beside his bed. He raced back to Poi and slammed a charge of [Treat Wounds] into the dragonkin, who coughed out something far too quiet for Erick to hear. Erick hit him with another charge.

Poi gasped, “He— Heal Teressa!”

Erick did as he was told, even though Teressa had no head.

Teressa’s head began to regro-OLY SHIT that’s creepy! Erick had to hold back a barf.

Jane.

Erick dashed to Jane’s room.

She wasn’t there. The bed was rumpled. The window was open—

The window was torn open, off its stone hinges. Erick rushed through the room to the window, sticking his head out into the night. The light of his lightward had covered a great deal of the house, shining bright sunlight into the darkness, like he had strung the place up for Christmas.

There was nothing out there, save for the normal lights of the far away city, and the flat land of the Human District.

Poi lurched into the doorway. “They came too fast—”

“How long since they took her?” Erick spat out, “Are you in contact with the Army?”

“Shadowvenom blocks many mag—”

“GUESS.”

Poi forced himself to stand a bit straighter. “Based on my blood pool... 3 minutes. Maybe less. They should have tried to taunt you and they wouldn’t have done that unless they were sure of their escape. What did they s—?”

Erick didn’t answer; he didn’t have the time to answer. He was furious. Anger was a poison, and it was all consuming. Erick moved as fast as his body would allow.

Aurify.

Mana Shaping X.

[Airshape X].

[Telekinesis X].

A brand new spell popped out.

Flight of a Thousand Hands Aura, 1 MP per second, medium range

Gain complete, quick control over a large amount of air and a thousand arms of intent. Take flight, if you are able!

Instinct gripped Erick as he gripped the windowsill with a hundred invisible arms. He launched himself out of Jane’s room, leaving Poi behind, looking for a trail, holding on a thousand pockets of air with a thousand unseen hands, racing two stories above the ground.

A very distant part of him flew across the land in wonder, marveling at magic.

A very present part of him was beyond anger.

The [Alarm Ward] on the house had been silent, and keyed to everyone. He fixed this oversight now with another [Alarm Ward] and raced through it, triggering a blaring warning in his own voice.

“Shadowspiders in the City! Shadowspiders in the City!”

The alarm repeated, loud and vibrating. Having been triggered, it would run out of energy soon enough, but the message had been delivered. The Oceanside Mage’s house lit up. Out in the rest of the city, lightorbs bloomed in the night.

Erick saw a shadow slip over the northern wall, carrying a bundle, the dark silhouette limned by silver-pink moonlight. Anger turned to hate, as Erick said a prayer of thanks to whoever was the goddess of chance, as he raced across the land, picking up speed.

[Special Ward].

A massive spotlight of brilliant white light sprang into existence 50 feet up, illuminating the northeast wall of the city. Two spiders were climbing up the wall, their stark spindly forms like black etchings against orange brown stone.

Mana Shaping

[Withering].

300 mana flowed through Erick as he splashed his [Withering] against the spiders far ahead, wrapping the spell up and over the wall, then letting it flop and adhere to the other side in a mile-wide semicircle.

Two spiders winked out, falling into their own shadows. Not dead; [Shadowalk]ed away, probably.

A visual alarm came up from the wall, two hundred yards left of where the spiders had been climbing. Someone was there and lighting [Special Ward]s of their own. Orange globe things; Erick didn’t know what they were supposed to mean, exactly.

Erick felt a tingle on his mind.

Killzone’s voice came though, ‘Erick. Are you there?’

This is [Telepathy]? They took Jane. They’re still here.

Erick was at the wall. There were no signs of spiders, but how would there be? They didn’t seem to leave web trails wherever they had walked; they weren’t slugs. Erick flew up and over the city wall, his thousand hands finding the tiniest of purchases, and when they didn’t find a spot to hold on to, they gripped air and that worked well enough. Erick flung himself over the wall.

Three half-moons shone down upon a dark land studded with ten foot tall gems.

You have slain Shadowspider F!

35% Participation!

+84552359 exp

Far below, a thousand feet from the wall, was Jane. She was wielding a shield of light and pulling a sword covered in dark ichor out of a dark dead thing. Erick spread his aura wide to glide across the distance.

“Jane!”

She turned to see him fly in. “Dad!”

She laughed as Erick touched down, throwing her sword and shield to the desert sands. They raced into each other’s arms.

“Are you hurt!?”

“I couldn’t cast anything until your spell dried out the webs!”

“You’re safe? You’re good? You—”

“I’m good. I’m good.” She gasped. “Is everyone else—”

“They’re fine.” Erick hugged Jane tight. “I don’t know how I didn’t wake—”

“It happened fast. I woke up in webs halfway out of the window.” Jane hugged tight.

She shook a little, and Erick held her tighter. He was probably shaking a little, too. Erick stood there, holding Jane until both of them stopped shaking.

She sighed out, and Erick sighed with her.

Jane pulled away, asking, “How did the [Alarm Ward]s fail?”

“The only reason I woke up...” Erick breathed deep, then said, “I woke up because one of them purposefully triggered the [Alarm Ward] by my window. They must be able to see the [Ward]. I thought Al and I had hidden them better, but... I think I need to get a [Solid Ward], or whatever you call it. Bacci and Al both have one, but they can only have one [solid ward] at a time... It was on my to-do list.”

“Mine, too.” Jane looked her father up and down. “That’s a handy spell you got there, Dad.”

Erick chuckled, the terror of the last minutes evaporating. He breathed out, and said, “It kinda just... Seemed natural.” Erick focused on his FoaTH Aura, silently laughing that the acronym was at least intelligible. The air shifted around him. His thousand hands touched upon the soil, the air, and the corpse of the spider. Eww, that felt nasty. “Uh. Should we take it with us?”

Jane smiled at him, and then at the spider corpse. “Yes. Absolutely. Be careful with it, too. See that flickering shadow? No one kills these things. They’re worth a lot of money.”

Erick was immediately faced with an oddity. “That’s... corruption, isn’t it? It didn’t [Cleanse]?”

“That’s shadowstuff; not corruption. And I killed it. So it didn’t [Cleanse].” She chuckled. “I had some help, of course, but I got the kill.”

Erick smiled as he inspected the monster. There were flickering shadows around the joints, the spinnerets, and the fangs. So that’s what he was feeling with his aura. Eww. Shadowstuff looked like dark fire, but it felt like he was like sticking his hand in a bowl of cold, slimy macaroni, like the ones Erick set out every year at the rec center for the neighborhood kids’ Halloween party. But worse. Shadowstuff was definitely worse than cold, slimy macaroni. Though it wasn’t corruption! That was good to know.

He picked it up without complaint.

“You look really weird right now, Dad.”

Erick looked at himself. Nothing seemed that strange, but with Meditation active, he saw the streamers of intent that connected him, in some vague airy sort of way, to a thousand clumps of controlled air and force in the shape of tiny human hands.

Erick said, “Let’s go home. I can carry you, too.”

Jane smiled in the light of the moon. “I love you, Dad.”

Erick picked her up like she was a kid again, in the crooks of magical arms that were and were not his own. He held her in a seated position on his right. On his left he held the spider. He pushed himself into the air, and with a few hundred telekinetic hands, made his way over to the wall and up, into the spotlight he had created—

Killzone blinked into existence on the wall beside them.

Jane shouted, “FU— oh.”

Erick’s telekinetic arms were almost upon Killzone, but he pulled his punch; Killzone noticed, but didn’t seem to care. After Erick’s heart stopped pounding, he just glared at the man. The solid black orcol-shaped wrought seemed content to let Erick figure out the rest of his response. Eventually, Erick decided to set Jane and the spider down on the three yard wide walkway that was the top of the city wall.

“Howdy,” Killzone said. He pointed at the spider. “That’s going to be a problem. Who actually killed it?”

Jane said, “I did. What are you talking about? Problem?” She almost turned angry, but Erick could tell she was holding it in. “They attacked. We defended.” She corrected, “Dad defended. He gave me the opportunity to counterattack.”

Killzone spoke with authority. “That’s one of Tania’s spiders. She lent them out to Bulgan six days ago.” He said, “Don’t get me wrong. It’s good that you didn’t get captured; that would have been a bad day for everyone. But you might’ve tipped a power balance over to Bulgan’s side. Tania might kill Bulgan, or she might ally with him. The politics of the Dead City are on a precipice and the whole thing could crash one direction or the other. Whatever the case, I’ll need to inform Frontier that they might be receiving some pain.” His voice turned heavy, “I’m sorry my people couldn’t defend against some spiders.”

Erick’s anger returned. He barely kept the rage out of his voice, “What would happen if I flew into the air and cast [Withering] into their city?”

Jane stared at Erick. Erick kept his eyes on Killzone.

“Ha ha! You fly strange! But you fly well!” Krakina’s words carried to Erick’s ears on the desert winds. “Ha ha! I wish you would have created this flight thing before you created [Withering]. I wanted to take you out to see your [Call Lightning] fry some mimics! Whatever your new spell looks like, it cannot be as good as lightning!”

“It gets the job done.”

“So does walking everywhere! But flying is so much better! Ha ha!”

Erick ‘flew’ forward, hearing Krakina’s words but focusing on the land below.

Flying was amazing, now that he had a moment to appreciate the view, and the pure freedom of the skies.

The greens and browns and blue standing water of the farm extended all below Erick, like a splash of life on an otherwise dead land. But it wasn’t dead. From up here, Spur was a termite mound, studded with colorful people, in the center of a vast country of sand and blue-white crystal spikes. To the south was Ar’Kendrithyst, and they were probably watching him right now. Erick had spotted two [Scry] orbs, both of them white surrounded by black, and popped them both.

Erick turned to the lands north of the farm. He breathed. He prayed. He Shaped a [Withering], dropping a ten foot tall, three square mile blanket of death, that edged the farms and extended off into the distance. Erick paid attention to where it stopped; that would be the line to drop the next one.

This whole scenario was strangely similar to his first experiment of Shaping [Cleanse] into the bottom of the Sewerhouse’s settling pools.

Fourteen notifications popped. Erick, Poi, and Krakina watched the land sputter up thick air here and there. [Withering] leveled to 6. 6 minutes was way overkill; 1 minute inside a [Withering] was more than enough to kill a crystal mimic.

The breeze blew across the land, through the sky, and across Krakina, Poi, and Erick, but it did not move them; all of them had [Airshape] in their flight spells. Poi looked excited, like someone was laying out presents for him for Christmas. Krakina... Krakina looked much less enthusiastic.

“Did anything happen?” she asked.

“Yes. 14 mimics died. Look for the thick air, like you get from a [Cleanse].”

“... oh.”

Erick Shaped another [Withering], dropping the spell directly north of the previous one. More notifications popped as more thick air joined the breeze, but most of the spell’s effects were too far away to witness.

Erick said, “That’s about 6 square mi— 15 square kilometers, cleared of mimics.” He pointed left, to the west. “I’m moving that way and doing the same thing, as mana allows.”

Krakina turned to him. She had nothing to say, but her eyes glinted with fear. She nodded.

“[Withering] is keyed to only affect anything with a 10 mana rad or more, inside of them. It doesn’t work on people.”

Krakina faked a smile, and nodded. But she didn’t say anything. That’s how Erick knew it was a fake smile.

By the time Erick had cast [Withering] number 12, the last of the set, directly facing Ar’Kendrithyst, he had spent over 3600 mana on [Withering], 1800 on [Flight of a Thousand Hands Aura], and taken about an hour to do the whole thing. He had covered 90 square kilometers with [Withering]. 112 adult mimics, and nothing else, lay dead at his hand, each of the mimics counting for 95% Participation. Phagar, the God of Death and Time, seemed to approve.

Krakina did not. She wasn’t talking. She wasn’t laughing. She was scared.

Erick didn’t approve, either, but what he had done was necessary. Erick went to the temple in the middle of the garden, turned on [Exalted Storm Aura], and checked out his Status. His numbers had certainly gone up, but no matter how much he tried to [Cleanse] himself, he still felt dirty.

He put 5 points into Willpower, then closed the screen and waited for his mana to fill. It didn’t take long; not with 50 Focus and Scion of Focus. Erick renewed his [Personal Absorption Ward], this time for 730 damage.

Erick Flatt

Human, age 48

Level 35, Class: Particle Mage

Exp: 860893359/1493035200

Class: 6/6

Points: 3

HP

444/444

444

MP

750/750

6000 per day

Strength

20

+0

[20]

Vitality

20

+0

[20]

Willpower

25

+0

[25]

Focus

50

+0

[50]

Favored Spell waiting!

Favored Spell waiting!

Withering 8, 1 minute per level, super long range, 500 MP

Purge all water from all monsters in super large area, dealing every second. Cleanse the land around every monster killed in this way.

Particle Mage Only.

Exp: 2200/3400

Search: Swift Movement.

Swift Movement 1, 5 HP per second

Move faster.

Purchase Swift Movement for 1 point? Yes/No

Yes.

Erick did not buy a healing spell. Instead, he just used [Swift Movement] as much as his Meditation induced Rest state would allow; Resting also turned HP regen per day into per hour.

But he didn’t move much. All he did was stare out onto the green fields, watching the platinum rain...

This was enough stress right now.

- - - -

Valok said, “Hey, Erick.”

“Hello. What’s up?”

“You can have a day off. A few days, even.”

Erick sighed. “Is Krakina scared of me?”

“Yes.” Valok said, “But this is not about that. We want to try for a full day of rain. If we need to use next week’s timetable to do it, we will.”

“Okay.” He tried to joke, “But I expect some entertainment!”

“... We can see about getting some... Dancers? Books?”

Erick wanted to laugh that off, but he couldn’t. “Sorry, Valok. That was a joke. I can entertain myself. When do you want to do this?”

“In four days. We’ll expand the farms a bit and feed the cows and water the plants the old way. Then you come and we do a full day of rain.”

“So why did just you come to tell me this?”

“... Krakina is high strung and Apogough is keeping her company.”

“Was there something wrong with killing mimics? They’re a plague, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. They are.” Valok turned and walked away.

Great.

“Put it on the schedule, Poi! Four days, then I get to find some way to stay awake for 24 hours. Good thing I invented coffee-tea. 'Coftea'? Maybe..." Erick said, "If the monsters are watching then they’ll probably attack then.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

- - - -

Erick begged Al off of their night of drinking.

So, Al brought a keg and they got drunk together at Erick’s house. Al spent the night in the guest room.

It was a much better night than the one that came before.