Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

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Lord Mick slowly skated backwards as the Wisps pressed towards the line of archers, still Spotting as he did so, listening for Briggs’ orders to go faster or slower as required.

Strobing Dartchains flashed past him, while a crackling bolt led a staccato flight of finishing arrows and bolts into the incoming Wisps.

It was all Karma, accruing nice and fast as the glass cannon creatures spit, sparked, and died, collapsing back into the mana field as the great field of vivus in the center of the island continued to expand with all the repeated deaths of Elementals and Wisps still duking it out in brilliant, loud, and nonstop exchanges of magic and bodies of opposed energies.

Still spawning two to one, the Wisps overflowed the kill ratio, which was improving in their favor as the Rift visibly began to close at the ends, restricting the area the Elementals could crawl from.

“Martine is retreating with the ends of the Rift, keeping it open as long as he can,” I reported to the others, who just nodded and kept at our end of the task.

It was a long way to dawn.

-------

Eventually we were indeed pushed back off the island by the relentless increase of the numbers of the Wisps, and Briggs had to break open the Shoreward and start sending the Barges and Wagons on through as those behind covered for them.

The Mick stepped through the Shoreward as the last person to do so, and Briggs moved away from it, allowing the field of protective magic to slowly regrow and cage the Wisps inside it once more.

Not that it stopped the Wisps from undulating wildly out over the shallows and letting loose with fire and lightning as long as their mana held out at the archers sitting out there.

Said archers now slumping down where they’d been standing, groaning and clutching at aching shoulders and backs, fingers often bloodied by hauling back strings too many times for even their calluses to handle matters, even draw rings tearing at the skin of the digits they were upon.

The supply of arrows, bolts, and rocks was thoroughly depleted, Briggs’ calculations good to within twenty minutes of complete deprivation.

All the archers were laying down to rest after sipping at bright yellow Potions or alchemical Foods to relieve their muscle fatigue, while a wave of minor Healing magic fixed all the bloodied fingers and hands enough to get everything fixed up enough for them all to doze off.

“Three hours to dawn,” Briggs rumbled, looking at the first stirrings of false dawn coloring the sky beyond the bright and continuing conflict doing its own job of lighting up the sky. “Confirm what happens then, Magos.”

“Natural Renewal will sweep across the world, and break continuity of magic,” I said quietly, standing there in Aurora Stance to also regain my own mana from the AoE Heals I’d just dished out. “The vivus on the ground will be drawn down and away and dissipate. The Elemental Rift, no longer having the Harbinger as an anchor point, will finish closing, cutting off the Elemental reinforcements. That will break any Veil disruption entirely, and Martine will likely Teleport away if he can do so.

“The remaining Elementals will be killed, and the Wisps will be packed to the gills on Asheron’s Island. But the Wisps will also be done respawning, and as long as we don’t kill any more with vivus, they can be mowed down and safely harvested.”

“With the Rift closed, there’ll still be Wisp generators popping up?” Kris asked casually from the side. I had my Detects going for Aquatics, so we weren’t going to be surprised by any showing up, but the only thing that had popped up was a school of remorans that hadn’t gotten within a hundred yards of us.

“This island has several major ley lines running through it, particularly between the two mountains. It’s probably why Asheron built his castle up there. Those ley lines are still down there, and the magic is heavy here. The Land may have vented up a lot of corruption, drawn from a large area, but I’ve no confidence that it is all used up if we want to restart the process.”

“This is one of the best archer training missions I’ve ever seen. If we can replicate this basically at will, we should have an almost unbeatable archer corps fairly soon,” Briggs nodded. “High Karma, quick kills. The only limit is ammunition and stamina, basically.”

“And Asheron returning and not liking what was done to his décor while he was away,” Princess Kristie smirked. “But I agree. The island is isolated. As long as someone is here who can bring down the Shoreward to retreat behind, we can basically pop a vivic spot, keep shooting wisps down, fill the landscape with them, and then the dawn wipes the vivic spawnpoint and we can wipe them clean away.

“XP gained equal to how fast and how long you can kill the Wisps.”

“Put it in the books as a training plan, soon’s we get more mages what can take down the Shoreward,” the Mick drawled from where he was sitting on our Wagon’s steps. He waved negligently at the veritable wall of Wisps still writhing and undulating on the other side of the Shoreward. “Any plans on how t’ clear those away so we can re-enter easy-like?”

I flashed up three circles of thirteen Greater Shards, each of them as long as my forearm and wreathed in all sorts of nasty Kickers for the benefit of the Wisps.

“Oh, right,” he murmured, looking at the wheeling wedges of crystalline force. “Forget I asked anything,” he smiled cheerfully. “Don’t be killing all of them by yerself now, lass!”

“I had to sit there for twelve hours while the archers got in hundreds of kills each because helping out would have just cut into how many of the things we could actually kill,” I reminded him primly. “While absolutely necessary, it’s also very boring being the watcher and a support mage doing almost no support.”

“Aye, running all us Spotters’ arcs of fire in yer head while maintaining yer Detects so we got no surprises an’ having Heals on fast trigger an’ Spellflares ready in case the bloomin’ thing up on the hill decided t’ have some fun with us. Most of the archers don’t have a clue just how well they were being watched over, but some did, lass.”

“Still relatively boring, Lord Mick,” I smiled, inclining my head towards him. “But thank you.”

“Dinnae mention it, lass. Had too many former experts at bein’ support mages turn t’ just blastin’ stuff, simply because it were more exciting. I notice when someone does the job well, now, especially when I see it so rarely.”

“The slower mana regen should have corrected a lot of their attitudes,” I sniffed, fully aware that being able to endlessly send out combat-worthy attack spells was the main reason I could actually contribute. Otherwise, like every other mage here, a few dozen War spells and I’d be out of mana, and that would be that until I sat through a lot of boring mana renewal.

I was just lucky that I had Spell Slots which gave me a whole lot of reserves even if I was tapped out in my Mana Pool. Still, relative, and none of this fighting was small squad stuff where you could regain at least something between encounters. No, this was constant, full-time go-go-go, and spell management was totally real.

Sieging spells wasn’t possible here, either, although Reserves were, and the Mana Pool made the rep counts easy to get on the core spells. The main problem was that all the Reserves were rather minor in power, with only Healing Reserve really proving useful for the long-term. By the time the Reserves were useful, they amount of damage they did was so incidental it was basically only useful as backup if you really did run out of almost everything else.

Different world, different Rules.

“Take your rests, then. After dawn, we start up again,” Briggs ordered, his green eyes gleaming in the flashes of unleashed magic in the distance. “We’ll see how well and fast we can sweep the land free of these Wisps.”

------

It really was kind of surreal, watching the sun come up and the effect it had on the land.

The white area covered by vivus extending back at least a half-mile from the Rift there, clearly visible even at a distance with the writhing masses of Wisps juking around on top of it. The blasts of War Magic and Elementals coming up and dying hadn’t stopped all night, but now, now the light of the new day stole across the center of the island, the sun sweeping forth after everyone rose to finish the Salute to Aru, chasing away fatigue and nerves and leaving everyone fresh and composed to start the new day.

The unwhite mists and glowing ground evaporated under the impact of the rays of the sun. The glowering Elemental Rift putting up so many unhealthy Elemental energies began to shake and fade, even as the incoming Wisps stopped happening entirely.

We watched the arrayed lights streaming up from the Rift slowly retract down the sides of the southern mountain, leaving double rows of Elementals there locked in combat with Wisps and no more reinforcements incoming.

They were blasted down quickly enough, the Rift closing up as smoothly and easily as it had opened, leaving barely any sign it had been there at all, save for a seething mass of very densely packed Wisps where it had once been. The Wisps were now trapped by their own numbers, bouncing around and wondering what to do and where to go once all the Elementals had been killed, a process that took less than five minutes after the last of the Rift had gone away.

It also left us at least forty square miles of territory absolutely covered by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Wisps.

The landscape was basically covered in them now, wheeling and whirling balls of dark negative Psychic energy, looking for something to unload on and not knowing what to do.

“We don’t have enough arrows to kill them all without OMA Quivers,” Selena said, swallowing slightly.

Yesterday had been a long day, Wisps continually coming, sniped off of flows going this way and that. But now… the entire island was just covered with them!

“Magic use is on the table, which means we can fight our way through the areas we were addressing yesterday, and reclaim arrows and rocks,” Briggs pointed out to everyone, which cheered everyone up. “Furthermore, although the Wisps may stream in from other locations, they are no longer spawning at all. What you see in front of you is what is there to be killed, and we’re going to be killing them.

“Anticipate a lot of hiding behind those Mantlets, there’s a reason they are in front of you and a reason we are having you Infuse them against Fire and Lightning. This will not be the steady slaughter of yesterday! The Wisps will be shooting back more often, and we will be advancing and retreating as needed to keep pace with their numbers,” Briggs announced to everyone.

“Bows up! The Lady Magos will clear the entry point and start our way in, you will be backing her up and building on her opening efforts!

“Your Highness, if you will.”

Princess Kristie was standing out there on the water, grinning hard at the swirling tailed orbs whirling madly in the air just on the other side of the Shoreward, trying to reach her and failing miserably at it. They’d long expended all their mana, so there was no magic testing things out as she raised her hand and solemnly punched the Shoreward.

Three dozen Greater Shards shot past her, hit a whole bunch of Wisp targets there, exploded with Kickers, and then were blasting every which way in overlapping layers of destruction as each one of them sought another twenty-five targets to vent themselves on.