A shop overrun, once filled with arms and armor, now empty. Looted, it appeared, still crawling with opportunistic bandits trying to cart away entire stacks of smelted steel.
They never even saw their deaths, the Revenants too fast for the Untempered to track. They died before they even hit the street.
Street after street, Felix was pulled along the fitful connections within the Ravager King. He saw boots on the ground, red cloaks, and folk being pushed out of their homes. A great hue and cry was filling the quarters to the tune of "heretics!" Flitting between places like a spastic bird on the wing, Felix saw and smelled and heard much, most of which was angry shouts that soon turned to screams and desperate wailing.
The Revenants caught everyone off guard.
Acolytes were torn down as several streets were flooded with the creature, their armor and Tempered Bodies not enough to withstand their hungry ferocity. Guilders being pushed toward the Wall were beset by a half dozen Revenants, all of them dying before swords could be drawn. In fact, were it not for the uncontrollable appetites the Revenants displayed, they would have swept through the entire city, few as they were.
Onward, the surging connection pulled him.
"Ice Arrows!"
A wave of chill projectiles fell from the Wall. In moments, the sound of thick ice shattering and the pained caterwaul of monsters filled the air.
"Sparkbolts!"
Another set of missiles flew from the battlements, these shining bright as torches as they sped into the amassed monsters. The Sparkbolts lit up the area for a brief moment, revealing mottled hide and greasy fur. Analyze designated them as Shriekers, and they lived up to the name.
"What in the Trackless' black Night is going on out there?" Mervin Cors panted. They looked to be burning through their Mana fast. "It's like they've gone mad!"
The creatures, easily the size of Avum, were throwing themselves at their defenses as if they had no sense of survival. There were at least a hundred bunched against the wall, and more were coming out of the woods. For a moment, Mervin thought he spotted something armored out there, in the trees.
It was gone before he could get a better look.
"Doesn't matter! Suppressive fire!" A Bronze captain snarled. "Don't let up until they're gone!"
His Spirit shifted, yanked from the Wall and thrown deep into the earth again. The power was waning; the Ravager's connections grew dim and misty.
Something was wrong.
Felix tried to focus, but he had no control. Sightless, he fell through layers of dirt and stone, refuse and bone from cities before Haarwatch. His Spirit fell like an arrow, hurtling back toward the Domain.
A song waylaid him, diverting his path just enough to speed beside a woman with bright eyes, aquamarine hair, and ochre skin. She raced through the sewers atop a wave of water and refuse. Motes of song pursued her, harmonies that strung out behind her as haunting echoes.
She looked at him. Her hands and throat moved, a Chant forming on her tongue. "Hold fast to it, Felix."
Brilliant, aquamarine vapor gathered in her hands, and a series of blazing sigils cracked the flesh of her forehead and poured out behind her like a streamer.
"Hold fast!"
Then the song lost its grip on him, and Felix felt himself snap backwards.
Felix's Perception collapsed inwards fast enough to give him whiplash, but his advanced stats let the punishment result in nothing more than a half second of disorientation. More than that, his Mind felt raw and clear, a bleeding edge. Zara's words pushed at his Spirit, urging him to move. Without letting himself think, he acted.
Abyssal Skein!
The Domain's hold slipped from him as if he was coated in oil, and Felix let himself blaze with Willpower. Like lightning, he tore the Ravager's whiskers from its face before spinning and digging his talons into the abomination's snout.
"Betrayer!" it thundered, the Domain's countermeasures failing by the dozen now. Its wings trembled and its legs twitched, huge motions that broke more and more of the bright circles of sigaldry.
"Shut up!" Felix flipped himself up and over it's semi-truck sized snout, landing solidly between its bone-like horns. "She said hold on, Mini-Maw! So how about this!"
Shadow Whip!
Shadow Whip!
Dark tendrils of his own spat outward, wrapping around and latching onto the Ravager's horns. Felix gripped them tight, like a pair of reigns as a wall of shimmering darkness loomed below them. The edge of the Void.
The few remaining constructs around them shattered like glass, transparent and drained of power. Momentum, long held in stasis, rocketed outward.
But it was too late.
The Void shattered into blinding light.
The Manaship Stalwart hovered above the city of Haarwatch, a soaring reminder of the high price one must pay for taking the easy ways to power. Sorcery and dark guidance, terms that were anathema to the Pure Light of the Pathless, He Who Defied Ruin, the One Who Preserves by allowing Humanity to flourish on its own.
Master Inquisitor Katan stood tall upon the bridge of the Stalwart, looking through alchemically treated wood beneath his feet. As transparent as glass and as hard as stone, the wood was the perfect vantage through which to view his final victory over Haarwatch. Even from such heights, his powerful Perception allowed him to view the pitched battles and ruthless culling of those who had proven themselves far too willing to backslide into chaos.
Order was being restored.
Below, any and all heretics were being rounded up, while those Guild members not on the Wall were being shifted toward the Domain. After all, they were the city's first line of defense. A grim curve flitted about his lips.
Katan scanned once more for his Master Tier opponent, the Sorcerer. However, just as before, he could sense neither hide nor hair of her. He had searched for hours, and the failure twisted at his soul. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the Continent!
He briefly entertained the idea that she was one the Hierei were looking for...but no. Not even an Unbound would make it to Master Tier so soon.
He would have to keep looking. The summoned bastards couldn't hide from them forever.
"Master Inquisitor, sir! The seers are reporting--it's--" The Acolyte swallowed---Roderick, he recalled.
"Spit it out, man," Katan said, not bothering to look up from below.
"The Domain is falling, sir. Beasts have begun running amok."
"A shame," Katan glanced at the Acolyte and smirked. "Are our people out of the area?"
"Most, sir," Roderick said somewhat unsteadily.
Katan scowled. "Tsk. They were warned. Very well. Begin our ascent. Ready the cannon."
The man visibly calmed himself before saluting and stepping toward the pilot. Katan nodded, pleased at the Acolytes mental fortitude. He'll go far. Not nearly as weak-willed as that other one.One cannot chase strength through temerity.
Katan looked to the helmsman, an Inquisitor. "Helmsman, keep the hill in sight. We've got a city to save."
"Aye, Master Inquisitor."
The Mana engines thrummed alive, their steady hover traded for a reserve-eating climb. The ship rose another three hundred feet, well within range of their cannon but far enough away to avoid any desperate Skill discharge. Katan was not one to leave things to chance.