Chapter 18: Thinning The Swarm III

The thunderstorm above the battlefield crackled with the barely contained wrath of the sky itself. The storm was the product of one of Evelyn's abilities but it was still a genuine thunderstorm and it felt furious, as if nature itself had decided to rid itself of the blight that defiled it.

Evelyn's control over lightning had grown by leaps and bounds over the course of just this mission and now she had reached the point where the powers of the sky felt as natural to manipulate as any one of her limbs. And so she picked out cluster after cluster of Yellow Wraiths, tearing a bolt of lightning out of the sky to strike down at them, destroying more and more of the pesky things.

This lightning wasn't like the stuff her spells could call up, the voltage an order of magnitude above what her normal spells were capable of. Where her normal spells could deal heavy damage to the personal barriers of a few Yellow Wraiths at a time this lightning was able to not just shatter the barriers of entire clusters but to also vaporize the Yellow Wraiths themselves. Each of her spells blew a hole into the swarm and more and more it thinned, the sea of yellow and black receding.

But Evelyn wasn't the only one working on thinning the swarm. Around her were several dozen members of Project Divinity, most of whom were doing their best to kill as many of the things as they could, all in the hopes of stopping the beast these Wraiths were protecting, the one that was creeping ever closer.

Evelyn wasn't entirely lost in the task of killing the Yellow Wraiths, however, and so she noticed something about the Red Rider. Alexis had tossed her magical spear Areadbhar at the creature in order to pierce the mount's eye. The eye was, at least according to Evelyn's Akashic Knowledge ability, capable of rousing the construct in the sky, which would be capable of sending out dangerous beams of energy once roused.

Alexis had used her spear's ability to pierce any armor in order to damage the creature's eye without having to destroy its barrier first and then she'd left the spear stuck inside the creature's socket. The beast allegedly had frightening regeneration but Alexis had reasoned that having a giant magic spear lodged in its skull might slow the regeneration. And it had. But while it had slowed the regeneration it hadn't turned it off entirely and now the spear was wobbling alarmingly, as if the regenerated tissue was about to push it out of the wound.

“Lex?” Evelyn called out.

**

“Lex?”

Alexis startled at the nickname. Nobody at Project Divinity had given her a nickname before, unless she counted all the sexy names Elaine and Ophelia had given her in bed so far. And 'Lex' wasn't a nickname anyone had ever used on her. To her surprise, however, she found herself liking it. It sounded cool. Not at cute as 'Lexi' and not as generic as 'Alex'. It was a nice nickname and she hoped it would stick.

Much more important than the nickname was the tenor, however, and she knew what Evelyn had been trying to tell her. The spear would be pushed out of the mount's eye socket any moment now and when it did she would only have seconds for the eye to finish regenerating.

So she decided to be proactive.

She used her M-skill to summon Areadbhar. But as Areadbhar had already been summoned before the skill didn't summon a new copy but instead teleported the one lodged in the beast's cranium into her hand. She hefted the spear, calculated the arc and then... didn't throw it. Instead she gathered power.

Last time she'd been too focused on neutralizing the eye to consider her options but right now she had a moment. The eye would regenerate momentarily and, furious as the beast was right now, it would likely start rousing the oculus immediately but that still gave her a little time to work with. And so this time she charged her attack.

Single Stroke Finish was a tremendously powerful ability, capable of multiplying the force of her blows. Each second of charging up would make the attack 100% more powerful, up to a maximum of five seconds. Fully charging the wind powers of Fragarach had been enough to carve an entire group of these bizarrely resilient thralls apart. What would fully charging a spear capable of piercing anything do?

She felt the power snap into place as the ability charged once, then again.

The eye finished regenerating, looking once again like it was made of fire.

The ability charged again. Three.

The beast blinked once, wetting its newly healed eye.

Four.

The eye focused on the battlefield and Alexis could feel something vast stirring. She had to stop the eye. Any longer and it would rouse the...

Five.

Alexis threw her spear. Something like a sonic boom blasted outward as the spear left her hand.

The arc was perfect and the spear struck true, the tip piercing first the barrier and then the eye before burying itself in the beast's socket. Except this time it didn't stop there. The blow had struck with six times its previous force.

Last time the spear had sunk most of a foot into the creature's skull and then been stuck there. This time the force of impact shredded the flesh off of the beast's head and then buried the entire spear all the way down to its pommel in the creature's body, coming out the back of the mount's head and continuing past it, carving apart massive portions of the mount's spine and digging into the rider's gut.

The thing went mad with pain. It howled and thrashed and twisted but the spear prevented its full range of motion and so the thrashing was accompanied by the sounds and sights of tearing flesh and breaking bones, the beast tearing itself apart from the force of its own anguished spasms.

Alexis might have felt bad for this thing if she didn't know what it was, who had made it and what he'd made it out of.

In response to the creature's distress the Yellow Wraiths swarmed it, pressing against its barrier and then slipping through it, cowering inside the barrier and sending out tendrils of foul Outsider witchcraft that tried to stitch the creature back together. Except there was still an enormous magical spear stuck inside the being and so only part of their efforts bore fruit while the rest merely caused the creature more pain.

However, this presented a problem. They had to kill the Yellow Wraiths in order to break the barrier but now the Yellow Wraiths were inside the barrier. Areadbhar could pierce the barrier but it couldn't break it.

Even worse, as more and more Yellow Wraiths entered the barrier the red haze surrounding the creature grew, pouring outward and creeping closer and closer to the camp's defenders.

This is my fault. I caused this. I was just trying to be helpful.

Her thoughts were spinning on repeat, a spiral of self-doubt, the confidence of Lugh replaced with the anxiety of Alexis, the scared little scifi nerd. But then she heard a voice that pulled her out of the muck and mire:

“Great job Lex, it's reeling!”

She looked up when she heard the voice. Her voice. The voice that gave her confidence.

“B-but... we can't hit the Wraiths anymore,” Alexis protested weakly. She wanted the comfort of Elaine's words to ring true but she...

“Leave that to me,” Elaine said. “You fucked that thing up, I'll fuck up its barrier.”

**

Crystal Sword of Tormented Souls, huh?, Elaine thought. Bit overblown but I'll take it.

Except she couldn't take it. The sword had been an accident, a lucky break. Somehow her magic, obsessed with creating crystal swords as it was, had compressed the ashes of the thralls into a sword. If the properties were as Evelyn's scan had suggested – and Elaine had yet to see the Akashic Knowledge ability being wrong – then this was an incredibly valuable tool.

However, said tool had been created by a ball of super-condensed, super-heated air, by plasma. As a result the sword had been so ludicrously hot that touching it had been out of the question. Cooling it down with water or ice magic had been equally out of the question. Not only might it have caused the blade to crack but it would have caused a steam explosion that would have put everyone around it in danger.

But then again, she barely ever actually touched her crystal swords, did she?

And so she tapped out a quick rhythm with two fingers on her thigh, casting a spell that made the blade with the overblown name float behind her back.

The blade was rapidly cooling down but even so it was still uncomfortably hot against her back.

Alexis had royally fucked the beast up when she'd buried her whole-ass spear inside it but the creature had reacted to this by sheltering the Wraiths inside its shield bubble. It was an unfortunate turn of events and she didn't want Alexis to think she'd done something wrong. She hadn't. She'd made the best decision possible with the knowledge she'd had. Nobody could have predicted the monster would do this. Hell, Elaine hadn't even known that these barriers were apparently semi-permeable.

And so she decided to reassure her lover. Evie had used an interesting nickname before and so she decided to use it as well.

“Great job Lex, it's reeling!”

Alexis began to protest, almost tripping over her words, and Elaine decided to cut her off before she could lose herself in self-doubt.

“Leave that to me. You fucked that thing up, I'll fuck up its barrier.”

And then she dashed forward, praying to God that this sword was as powerful as its overblown name suggested.

The creature seemed to think she was a danger at least because the rider raised its arm, the fingers pointing at her, and sent out a beam of Darklight from each finger. Elaine was acutely reminded that this wasn't just a mindless monster but actually made up of parts of intelligent creatures.

The beast hadn't sent out five haphazard laser beams in the hopes of hitting Elaine. The beams were spaced and timed in order to catch her off guard. No matter where she dodged, one of them would hit her. The only way to avoid the attack was to abort her own offensive and run. But Elaine didn't have to avoid the attack.

Six blades circled her on top of the new one and these days her cognition was fast enough that she had all the time in the world to interpose a blade with each of the beams of Darklight, even going so far as to angle the swords so that the beams would ricochet off them and strike the barrier. With the attack thwarted Elaine reached the beast without even breaking stride.

Once there she directed the Crystal Sword of...

Oh for fuck's sake, Elaine thought. It's the Tormented Sword now, damn it. There. That rolls off the tongue much easier.

Once there she directed the Tormented Sword to strike at the barrier and...

**

The shattering noise sounded like the end of the world. A single cut from Elaine's weird new sword had been all it'd taken to bring the barrier tumbling down. Jagged shards of Outsider power crashed to the ground, landing with the sound of shattering glass before immediately dispersing into ectoplasm and sublimating away.

Even louder than the sound of the breaking barrier, however, was the sound of Elaine's voice:

“Now!” she called out and Evelyn immediately realized what Elaine was getting at.

She'd destroyed the barrier, sure, but the Yellow Wraiths were whipping themselves into a frenzy, their tentacles undulating as they tried to construct a new barrier. Already shards of that barrier were creeping up from the ground, attempting to form a new dome around the creature.

They had to kill the swarm or there would be no winning against the Red Rider. Elaine had told them, had told all of Project Divinity, to throw everything they had at the Wraiths.

And they obliged.

Every member of Project Divinity attacked the swarm at once, with whatever they had. Most threw spells, some used weapons granted by their M-skills, and the few that had neither fired rifles at the things and gradually, gradually, the swarm thinned out. The Yellow Wraiths turned to ectoplasm and dissipated while the metal bits Caulder had stuck in them clattered to the ground.

But in all the excitement nobody noticed that with each Yellow Wraith that died the red haze spread a little bit further. It washed past the front line of Project Divinity to no effect. Every member of the front line was far past human, after all.

But then the haze reached the back line and, soon, the camp defenders standing right behind them.