Felix looked up from Evie's face. Her jaw was chattering and her lips were turning blue. "What?"
Zara's pale eyes met his own. "Something is stopping me from getting closer to her core."
"Stopping you? You're Master Tier. What could Evie do to stop you?"
"I could force my way in, but it would ruin her." Zara shook her head. "She would never advance beyond Weaving, and could not even Temper to Master Tier were I to do that. But you...whatever you did with Atar worked. You need to do it again. Can you?"
Felix clenched his jaw and placed a hand on Evie's own. "Doesn't matter if I can. It's Evie."
Cardinal Flame!
He dove into her channels.
The sandstorm howled just beyond the barricades, and monsters raged in its midst. Vess spun through attack after attack, leaping and landing amid the undead horde with greater and greater ferocity. Spears burst again and again, tearing through the creatures without mercy as fast as she could muster the Mana to summon them. Bolts of lightning and fire still zipped out from the skeleton, along with carefully placed arrows packed with deadly Blessings and Skills. The Legion were holding their own while Vess thinned the numbers in the storm, and even when more got through than she intended, the Henaari's hooked spears and the Frost Giant's massive ice-axes tore the enemy apart.
It was working.
You better be okay, Evie! Vess thought as she skidded to a stop on an angular ridge of stone. Dustwights streamed below her, pressing against one another in a mad dash toward the skeleton and her people. Adept Tier is harder than those that came before. Father always told me that, but I did not think it would affect them so much.
The sight of her friends on the ground had affected her more than Vess was happy to admit. That they could be struck down, even if it were only to their own advancement...it filled the heiress with dread. She dealt with it in the only way she had ever been taught.
You Have Killed A Dustwight (x3)!
XP Earned!
Vess had jumped up an entire level during the battle, but she was more concerned with pressing her Skills to their limits. She had to reach Adept Tier herself, and soon, or else she would be unable to protect anyone from the threats facing them. At least as Adepts they had a fighting chance against Masters, small though it was, and Vess could not foresee a scenario where they did not face the Paladins down. It felt inevitable.
Dragon's Descent!
She jumped and landed among another dozen Dustwights, their bodies exploding with the impact of her spear. Experience surged within her, and she nodded in grim satisfaction as her Skill grew.
Dragon's Descent is level 67!
PER +1
Vess paused as the Dustwights scrambled away from her blast, catching a sound on the wild winds. It was as if the storm had changed timbres suddenly, gaining a basso thrum to it that shook her teeth. There. It is...growing?
A single leap carried the woman fifty feet into the air, arcing up and over the battle before kicking off a bluff and leaping again. For a brief, weightless moment she hovered, over a hundred feet above the battle and braved the scouring winds. She squinted, pressing her Perception for all it was worth.
Elemental Eye is level 55!
The blackened green and dusty brown Mana all around them was darkening to the north. Strengthening.
Another storm. It is another storm!
She began to fall, but not before the second Cursewind hit them. Its unnatural strength added to the first, and the wind turned from powerful to undeniable. Vess was hurled from the sky, out into the desert where she impacted and exploded an entire dune with her impact.
"Ungh!" She groaned, clawing out of the soft ground. "No. That storm is bringing more than just wind." The air was impenetrable with orange dust and foul, swirling Mana, but she could see shapes falling from the new storm. Dustwights by the hundreds joined the army already laying siege to their temporary fortress. "I need to get back."
Her Health had dropped to half, but it was making a slow recovery, and Vess limped down the face of the dune. She'd traveled perhaps two hundred feet in her fall and couldn't even see the enormous skeleton through the storm. Still, she would make it back and help. Darius and Harn would have already seen the danger. They would be fine.
Then, between her and her friends, a series of sandy explosions blasted apart the dunes. Shielding her eyes against the gritty winds, Vess could not spot what had caused it at first, but then forms began to crawl from the impact craters. Tall and hunged, thin as corpses and bearing claws like curved daggers, they clambered from the sands. Ten of them. Fifteen. Thirty.
Analyze!
"No," she whispered. She had recognized them from Felix's description, but Analyze confirmed it. "Dustborn Wraiths."
Vess began to run.