"Hoar Hammer!"
A maul of cloudy ice slammed into the undead, crushing them beneath its heavy weight. Ice ripped across another two, freezing them into jagged shards that a second maul shattered. Frozen sand rained all around her, and Evie spun to face the advancing tide of blue-skinned giants. A hand the size of her torso offered itself to her.
"Lady Aren. We are here," Battlelord Ari said. "We will hold this flank."
Before she could overthink it, Evie grasped the giant's hand and let him haul her to her feet. She grunted and took a swig of a Health Potion. "Let's kill 'em all."
Ari nodded. "We shall follow your lead, Chainmaiden."
Evie blinked, but refused to think. She couldn't. There was only the fight.
She screamed as they charged, ice axes and chain meeting undead brawn.
"ATAR OWES ME MONEY!"
"Ahkestria is just ahead! Half a league at most!" Atar shouted over the din of battle.
"Keep going!" Felix ordered, before wheeling Pit around. "Get everyone out! I'll handle this!"
Pit let out a savage shriek and leaped into the air above the Claw, manipulating air Mana until it sent them rocketing back along the caravan. From the top of the vaulted tunnelnearly sixty feet highhe could see that his people were running ahead with everything they had, but a number of squads had resorted to running defensive measures. Hordes of Dustwights poured in from the rear and both flanks, but they were being held back...for now.
They ambushed us at the intersection, Felix thought as his Mind whirled through plans and points of attack. That's...that's way too smart for my liking.
The right tunnel was being handled by Evie andsurprisinglysome giants. Their tactics were freezing swaths of the ground and shattering the undead before they could advance. In the rear, several squads had gathered under the leadership of Vess, and were putting up a powerful effort. Arrows and spells ran amok in that direction. And to the left, Harn and another three squads were cutting through the horde as they ran. Felix's Voracious Eye burned, and his Mind soaked in everyone's information as fast as he could. The squads were moving, attempting to keep up with the caravan, but already he could see some of them burning through more Stamina than they could afford.
"Pull back! Retreat!" he bellowed, his Journeyman lungs rising above all the noise. "NOW!"
A Skill pattern sung within him, and Felix let it build, marshaling Mana and Intent within the frothing power that escaped his channels. Clouds manifested before him as he and Pit maintained their altitude, and Felix poured more and more Mana into the spell. As his people disengaged from the horde below, Felix fashioned a present for the undead. He held it, letting them follow his people into the intersection in their multitudinous throng, until everything below him was monster.
Rain of Cataclysm!
The clouds flashed with virulent green Mana before disgorging a torrential downpour. Acid rain tore through the undead, sizzling through skin and muscle and bone and dropping hundreds in seconds. Felix let the kill notifications wash over him, to focused on harnessing his Skill to pay attention to the System. They died below, yet their numbers did not dwindle. Fresh monstrosities raced from the dark, more and more, until his rain could barely keep up.
How many are there?!
Felix focused, sounding his Skill's pattern through the twin focus of Intent and Affinity. Chanting, as he understood it. Rain of Cataclysm was a Skill meant for armies, for monsters that sought to end everything. Memory of his Paths flashed before his eyes, of the great horde that had come for him in that vision of what might have been. The Skill had been so much more powerful in that place, but Felix could remember the texture of it. There had been a weight to it.
Trusting that feeling, he siphoned off the significance that dwelled within him, peeling pieces of it from his core space with Cardinal Flame. It was hard to do, but he'd managed it before. Red-gold sigils flared and burst, guiding the weight through him and into the pattern of his Skill.
It convulsed. It burned.
The clouds rippled as the power within his channels shifted. Leaden liquid flowed from him in a gush, saturating the clouds of Mana until a wave of dark, almost-black acid poured from the skies. For a few, terrible seconds, each drop hit the earth like a gunshot, drilling into stone as if it were tissue paper.
The Dustwights didn't stand a chance. Even a single raindrop burned through them, skull to spine, and they collapsed as if puppets with their strings cut.
Rain of Cataclysm is level 56!
...
Rain of Cataclysm is level 65!
The horde fell apart. By the time his Skill exhausted the small store of significance he'd sacrificed, the intersection below him and Pit was a pitted abattoir. Acid pooled in shallow craters and bodies were rendered into flesh and dark, dusty sand. Not a single Dustwight remained.
But there was movement.
Felix narrowed his eyes, and Pit let out an involuntary snarl.
Dozens of creatures stood up, many of them rapidly healing from their acid bath, and all of them too tall and covered in bone plates.
Wraiths.
More stepped out of the side passages, iron teeth gnashing, and heads swiveling up. Looking straight at Felix.