Chapter 16: Thinning The Swarm II

Caulder cackled long and hard as he watched the Red Rider's minions being torn to shreds and turned to embers by a tornado made of fire.

Part of it was his sadistic streak. The Red Rider hadn't just raised a mound of corpses. It had also enthralled a few still-living humans who had managed to hole up so far, dragging them along like marionettes on its strings despite them technically still having been alive. Of course, once the red mist had coiled around them their souls had already been forfeit, devoured by the power of the King in Yellow invested in the Red Rider, but even if killing those bodies had only ended their suffering, he still admired the ruthlessness with which that warrior had taken out his creations.

But another part of him was shivering with glee as he saw an ostensibly normal human working that kind of magic. His more augmented creations were capable of casting magic this powerful, even if it took them quite a bit longer. And of course higher ranking angels and demons had no issue casting magic like that. But this was clearly a mortal who was working this kind of magic. And that could only mean one thing.

Caulder had already been certain of Stollos' involvement in the creation of these soldiers but this was proof if proof was needed that Stollos hadn't spent the time since their falling-out idle. He had advanced and perfected his methods. He had found a way to elevate humanity without resorting to Caulder's methods.

As a former ally, Caulder was bursting with pride at Stollos' accomplishment.

But as the jilted madman he truly was he merely relished the chance of facing the peak of Stollos' ambition, relished knowing that destroying that creation would utterly crush him. It would assert, once and for all, that Caulder was the better creator, that the methods Stollos had condemned were in fact more effective.

Stollos had been developing the Oath of Crystal Tears back when Caulder had been busy working on his Ouroboros Drive and they had gone their separate ways soon after so this would actually the first time for him to fight one of those fabled Lacrima. And what better beast to engage with that Lacrima than the culmination of his work on the Ouroboros Drive, the Red Rider?

But it wasn't the only thing filling him with glee. At the same time as the fire tornado tore through his forces one of his sensors was showing him that his ritual circles were being systematically taken down. First one had gone offline, then another and another, until only one was left. They were flying under some sort of shroud but that could only hide their presence, not their actions.

He had of course expected something like that to happen. Each of these spells would have been capable of wiping out the entire enemy army on their own but he frankly didn't want them all to die to such parlor tricks. He just wanted to find out how they would deal with it. Of course that didn't mean he had sent those circles out to be destroyed. Creating them was expensive, damn it.

The Invasion had drastically lowered the price of human life but even so, five bodies per circle were still a loss, especially since they had to go through extensive remodeling before they could be used as ritual circles and most of that remodeling couldn't be done by machines. So while Caulder had a nearly limitless supply of bodies to play with, the time investment required to create these circles meant that he couldn't simply send them out to be destroyed. They had to serve some function other than to die amusingly.

And in this case five of those circles had been set up to lull the ones destroying them into a false sense of security. For the most remote of the circles was the most devastating and, unlike the others, it was guarded.

He cackled once again, terrifying all those of his creations that still had an intact sense of self-preservation.

**

Slaying the thralls hadn't been the triumphant moment Cassie had expected it to be. Of course the thralls no longer being in the way was a good thing but the beast controlling them wasn't mindless and it didn't ignore the fact that its distraction was gone.

The moment the last thrall was destroyed the Red Rider began flinging spells at the camp defenders once more. The first Cassie knew of it was when a dark portal appeared right over the biggest cluster of fighters and a moment later dozens and dozens of tentacles shot out of it, intent on ripping and tearing and shredding whatever they could grab a hold of. Cassie had heard about these tentacle portal spells, Gateways, Evelyn's scan function had called them, but he hadn't expected them to be this dangerous, nor this disgusting. The tentacles didn't have suckers. Instead they had sharp, bony spines on their insides. And rather than being some sort of apparition, some collection of phantom limbs, these tentacles seemed far too real, covered in some sort of slime or gel that made them glisten disgustingly. Not only did they look disgusting, they were strong as well.

Cassie, Elaine and Evelyn had managed to get everyone out from underneath that Gateway and so when the tentacles reached through they found nothing but empty air and the asphalt underneath. He had expected them to find no targets and retreat, had expected them to maybe bounce off the asphalt and grow disinterested, but that didn't happen. The tentacles tore through the asphalt, carving it apart as though it were freshly tilled soil rather than man-made stone. Yeah, Cassie believed these things could tear through their body armor if not avoided.

Even worse, that Gateway wasn't the only danger. Before they could even regain their bearings the Red Rider was sending out beams of Darklight and Cassie had to scramble to conjure enough ice to make them bounce off. Without the upgrade to Protective Refraction he was sure he wouldn't have managed to weather them all.

Thankfully, out of the corner of his eye he saw that the back row wasn't sitting there idly and was actually fighting back.

**

Abigail wanted to help the front line, wanted to do something to protect them from the hail of Outsider witchcraft the Red Rider was pelting them with, but that was not her role here. Her role, as well as that of those mages and ranged fighters around her, was to get rid of the swarm of Yellow Wraiths.

Not only did Abigail not have any abilities to stop Outsider witchcraft – aside from her personal shield – but if they just kept defending they would never get closer to actually beating their foe. And so Abigail left the defending to those who were able to do it and focused on the swarm instead. She put away her harp and pulled out her bow, then began firing arrows of light at the swarm of Yellow Wraiths. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have had a prayer of hitting these things with something as mundane as a bow but this was no ordinary bow.

Not only did she have an intrinsic, masterful knowledge on how to use the bow, she had also spent many hours training herself to use it. Just because the knowledge was there didn't mean the muscle memory was, except she'd done her best gaining that muscle memory. But the Bow of Apollo didn't fire normal arrows, it fired condensed light. Not only did these arrows of light fly true no matter the distance, they also reacted both to Abigail's wishes and to her light magic, allowing her to strike targets that should have been way outside her effective range.

And so when her first arrow struck it pierced a Yellow Wraith's personal shield as well as its air bladder and came to rest in the metal probe buried in the back of its... head? This would have been a devastating blow if it had come from a normal arrow but Abigail hadn't just practiced firing her bow, she'd also practiced modifying her arrows with magic and this one had a pretty special payload.

A moment after the arrow struck but before the deflated Yellow Wraith could sink to the ground and turn to ectoplasm the arrow exploded into dozens and dozens of shards of white-hot condensed light that blasted out and pelted the surrounding Yellow Wraiths. A personal shield could survive one shard but shattered when the second hit. A third hit was enough to take the beast down. Thanks to the somewhat random spread of those shards some Yellow Wraiths in the vicinity managed to survive but before they could retaliate or do anything meaningful to protect themselves Abigail's next arrow hit, exploding and creating another spherical area of devastation.

And that was just from Abigail's own attacks. Around her were over a dozen other Shard Bearers, all of them with their own spells or abilities to throw.

Yes, the Red Rider kept advancing despite the casualties its defenders were taking, but every inch of ground the beast gained lost another dozen Yellow Wraiths. The swarm had seemed endless at first glance, a murder of black and yellow men o' war blotting out the red skies, but with every inch the beast advanced and took casualties their ranks thinned, letting through more and more of the red light, which wasn't exactly a comforting sight but significantly better than having an unending swarm of enemies arrayed against them.

Abigail hated being unable to protect her companions from the Darklight but every arrow she fired brought them all closer to getting rid of the threat casting those spells and that gave her the determination to continue.

**

Five circles down, one to go, Ophelia thought as Prudence steered them towards the last.

The abomination wrapped around the ritual circle was spasming faintly and Ophelia had a bad feeling that meant the circle was about to unleash its payload. They had to be quick about it, to make sure they stopped it before it could send out whatever devastating spell it had been set to cast.

Prudence reached for the button that would open the Gospel's rear hatch when, with a horrendously loud crashing sound, something slammed into the side of their vehicle.

Nothing happened to Prudence because she had been strapped securely into the pilot's seat but Ophelia had been preparing to exit the vehicle and so she was flung around, crashing into the vehicle's side wall. The impact jolted her and scrambled her brain for just a moment. In that delirious moment she realized that the impact had made Prudence's hand hit the button to open the rear hatch after all and the door crept open, revealing their assailant.

Ophelia had seen Jeanne in action once, during the fight for Albion, New York. In that fight Jeanne had pulled out most of the stops, fighting something none of them could have defeated back then. It had been the first time Ophelia had seen an angel actually use her wings.

A few days ago Ophelia had seen her stud of a girlfriend rocketing out of a Gospel, her wings of crystal beating to catch her fall and twisting around to strike enemies and parry blows.

Both of these experiences had given her an idea of how angels fought, which is why she immediately recognized the silhouette in front of her.

The thing was humanoid, but only just. It looked as though someone had gone out of their way to make a being that actively defied symmetry. Its limbs were too long, with too many joints, but to what extent they were too long varied from limb to limb. Its head was a nightmare of stitches and differently colored flesh, missing all features except for a gaping maw of jagged, bloody teeth. And of course the creature had wings, four of them, clearly coming from two different beings, given that two wings were white and two were black. Except for the head and the wings the entire creature was clad in a tight-fitting suit that looked uncannily like the armor the cadets of Project Divinity wore, if that armor had been left to soak in the run-off of a Dark Young. Worst of all, the thing wielded a giant sledgehammer as a weapon, the brutal weapon utterly at odds with what she'd seen angels fight with so far.

Ophelia had a sickening suspicion that these were the spare parts of the two angels and the demon that had been left over from the creation of the Red Rider.

Either way, once she had recovered even just a little bit she realized this thing was here to stop them from destroying the last circle, which was glowing so fiercely Ophelia knew it was only moments away from sending out its payload. But fierce glowing was something Ophelia could work with. For where there was light, there were shadows.

The bright glow from the circle created crisp, clear shadows that were so easy for Ophelia to work with it was as if they were begging her to work with them. And so she used Avatar of Liminality to sink into a shadow, then appeared behind a tree right next to one of the circles. She'd learned already that trying to destroy the circles by shattering their barriers was a fool's errand. Oh, it could be done but it took far too much work. So instead Ophelia used Sorcerous Domination, which allowed her to unravel magical constructs. It wasn't as powerful as Darklight Vanquisher but with the enormous advantage of actually working on things other than Darklight.

Unraveling ritual magic, as it turned out, didn't merely cause the magic to fizzle out. It made it go haywire. And so Ophelia merely threw a stray strand of magical power into what the circle was trying to cast, her power giving her an intrinsic understanding of where to strike, and the entire thing shattered, the five poor bodies the circle had been made of popping like overripe grapes.

When there was absolutely no chance for the circle to cast anything anymore she turned to face the angel creature, which was hot on her trails.

Whatever else happens here, at least the rest of them are safe, Ophelia thought as she pulled out her daggers.

ChrisLensman

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