"Quiet, all of you," growled Harn. He was a bit shorter than Felix and the water was pushing closer to his middle thigh, but it didn't slow him a whit. He waded through the swarm of Veelo and released a single pulse of his near-Adept Spirit. The Veelo scattered. "You think a few veelo are all you have to worry about?"
Pit's Cold Resistance is level 29!
The Haarguard, through all of this, were remarkably even keeled. They seemed entirely too nervous to contribute much to the chaos, which was for the best. The mines passed with little else in the way of excitement, though grumbling between Evie and Atar was always at the edge of breaking into another fight. Alister and Vess acted as buffers, more often than not.
"How'd you do that pulse thing? With your Spirit," Felix asked Harn as they navigated the sloping tunnels. The ground was growing more even, more well traveled. They were close to the entrance. "I've noticed some powerful people have these auras to them, where their Spirit Aspect is affecting the world. I just can't figure out how to do it."
"Hrm," Harn pondered. He ducked below an overhang, pulling short on his reins to have his mount do the same. It was a dark bird, perhaps forest green in the daylight, but in the mines it looked dark as Pit's face. "Hasn't Zara been teaching you?"
"Some, but not enough," Felix said. Pit growled in sympathetic frustration. "She has been busy with other things, apparently."
"You sound frustrated," he said.
"I am."
"Too busy. Huh. Of all people, I'd figure she'd be bendin' over backwards to help you," he mused, his strange frog-mouthed great helm tilted to the side. What was left unsaid were the words: to help an Unbound.
"You'd think so, yeah. I dunno. I'm strong and my Skill levels are high and my combat training has only been getting more and more involved." Felix had kept his voice low, but he lowered it further as he and Harn took more of a lead. "But am I enough to face the Archon?"
"Are any of us?" Harn grunted right back at him. Felix's head tilted back. "You're takin' too much on your shoulders, kid. You're not alone. We may not be enough by ourselves, but we've proven several times now that we're damn hard to kill all together."
Felix laughed at that.
"As for the Spirit stuff, let's go over that once we're outta the city limits," Harn suggested. "It's a tricky technique to use, let alone perfect."
"That's fair," Felix said. "Thanks Harn."
"Don't mention it." Harn stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Truly. Don't mention it in front of the squirt. She's on my case about her core enough as it is."
Felix grinned and crossed his heart with his finger. "Secret's safe with me."
Harn rapped on his chest with a gauntlet and kept walking. Soon after that, they emerged into the upper levels of the mine, and quickly found their way into the late afternoon sunshine. The mine was located at the very edge of the Dust, relatively close to their old warehouse base, but not where he'd fought the Inquisition weeks ago. It also had the benefit of being inactive and fully warded. Harn's ward key let them pass out of the mouth of the mine with another parting of shimmering light.
"Ah, blessed sun! Glorious heat!" Atar whisper-shouted, spreading his arms and robes out beneath the summer sun.
"Gotta admit, I'm happy to get outta the dark," Evie said and Vess murmured in agreement. The heiress met Felix's eyes briefly before turning back to inspect her saddle.
"Where to now?" Kylar asked, before being shushed by one of his companions. "What? I can't ask?"
"Now we get moving," Felix said and pointed westward. "We're headed for the Wall and the forest beyond."
"The" Kylar started before choking on the word. "The Foglands?"
"Exciting, right? Bit less interesting since the fog went away, but I hear a lot stronger monsters have started popping up," Evie said with a sharp smile, and the majority of the group paled.
"Enough," grunted Harn. "We're moving."
They moved through town as quietly as a bunch of folks on giant birds could, keeping to back streets and ruined byways as the sun tilted west. The shadows grew longer by the minute, which was helpful, as was the near-abandoned state of the Wall Quarter. Only a few, centrally located shops, taverns, and inns were functioning after the Apollyon smashed them apart like a kaiju movie reject. It was a far greater challenge, however, to cross the Wall unnoticed.
The Fiend's Legion were stationed around the Rent and carefully patrolling on the other side. Felix watched them for nearly an hour, realizing they were taking things far more seriously since the monster horde attacked. He would have been almost proud of them had they not been in his way.
"Okay, so what's the plan?" Felix asked. "The floor is open to suggestions."
"Can we go...over the Wall?" Davum asked, his chin jutting out at the glowing orichalcum. "You can fly right? That's...that's what I heard."
Felix nodded. "You're not wrong, but it's pretty flashy. I wouldn't be able to get everyone over the Wall without being seen."
"Ah."
"What about your rocks?" Evie suggested.
"My rocks?" Felix asked.
"Yeah, the scripted rocks you made," Evie said, miming as if she were carving into a stone. "The boom rocks."
"Oh. Oh," Felix said, catching on. She means my grenades. Felix had a number of his crude, scripted grenades in his pack. Perhaps too many, but they'd been useful before. Felix still hadn't figured out a way to make them in a way that anyone could use one; as much of a tactical advantage that held, Felix was almost glad. The idea of everyone having access to explosives was...disconcerting at best. For now, each grenade took a significant amount of Mana to "arm" and then a thread of said Mana to follow it as it was thrown, to ignite it. That meant the Skill Mana Manipulation was necessary for anyone who wanted to use them. In the group, Atar, Alister, Harn, and Felix had the Skill, though he'd been trying to teach Vess and Evie.
Of the new folk, he wasn't sure. He made a mental note to get their full list of Skills and general capabilities.
"Okay. That's a good idea. What's your plan though?" he asked.
Evie laid it out and no one had any real objections. Soon enough, she had dropped into Stealth and all but ran up the Wall. Her ability to alter her own mass let her do some pretty amazing things, despite not having the stats or Skills to run up a wall. While she ran, a grenade was tucked into her bandolier of knives, and Felix maintained a stream of Mana vapor connecting him to the grenade despite the distance. It took a huge amount of Mana to manage what they were doing but, well, Felix had it. Why not use it?
Through the thread, he could feel when she hurled it off the top of the Wall, angling it to the north. Felix gritted his teeth and held on. His Mana dropped dozens of points by the second, but it was holding. Barely.
So far away, he thought. He had to keep the vision of his thread constant, letting his Mana pulse from his channels at a steady rate. Felix felt like taffy, pulled and twisted as it flew, until he felt the scripted stone land with a dull thud. Evie landed at his side only moments later, and he relaxed.
The vapor thread twisted, igniting the sigaldry.
*BOMF*
A muted boom sounded in the near distance, followed by a crackling, secondary discharge of violent force and lightning. The Legion exploded in a flurry of activity that was almost comedic. A large portion of them stumbled over themselves, caught absolutely flatfooted by the detonation and rushed toward the source of the disturbance without a single look back.
"See? Easy," Evie said.
Distracted, the Legion was simple to slip past, especially with Felix's Abyssal Skein covering most of them for good measure. He left Evie and Harn out of it, the two of the most capable at stealth in the groupironically, considering Harn's big, bulky armor.
The treeline was simply to reach at that point.
They had begun.