An Age of Mysterious Memories

Exhaling smoothly, I can sense that I’m nearing what’s left of Wistenzlia peak. Y’know, the mountain I blew a third off of down into Vieriss Valley. Oh is that all? Reggie? Mhm? Stop snarking off at yourself. Right, right. Sorry. Well don’t bother apologizing, just get to it! Alright already, stop being pushy! Wait. Ugh, nevermind. I’d facepalm, but it already feels like I’ve been slapped in the face about a billion times from all the air I’m pushing through while lightning burst boosted tk square leaping across the sky.

Feeling silly that your internal monologue is roasting you? Yeah, a little bit. Maybe stop doing it then? Shut up. I’m trying. Anyway, so, phooph. Deep breaths Reggie. In, and out. Yeah, I know how to breathe doofus. Do you? Try thinking about Errissa for a second. My breath catches in my throat thinking about the supple leathers on the slate grey scaled Draconiac whose liquid mercury eyes captivate me so. Oh you complete jerk. Pft. You literally did it to yourself. Also, maybe get out of your head and back to reality Reggie? You’re about to drop through two smaller layers of Worldstorm. All so you can crashdown strike into Terrorzin’s horde. Again. The whatever’th time in two days.

We do this, and we do it now, because this is it. We fight, we live, we die, because in this moment, and the rest of them until we win this thing, this is war. It’s now or it’s never. It’s down to the wire, so get ready to get inspired. Fam? I love you all. Here goes nothing. I feel like some ninja from some village hidden in leaves as my hands perform the gestures to craft the runes necessary for my magic. My flesh takes on its adamantite form, and I unequip my Wyverium Chestplate while leaning forward off of my TK square.

Falling into a dive, I let the wind whipping around me rush over and past me. As it does, I try not to lament the passing of Sylphie, the wind elemental spirit who aided me on Can’Z’aas. She gave everything of herself to help me save ungrateful beavers. Y’know what? I never let myself be angry at them for it. Other than some explosive wrath, I never really just let myself have feelings about losing Sylphie for what amounted to nothing in the end. I pass through one layer of the Worldstorm, almost unscathed, my Adamantite form keeping me perfectly protected.

In this hollow area of the Worldstorm, time seems to slow. I’m forced to confront my feelings on loss after loss of friends and allies across both of my lives. The ones that stick out the most are how elemental spirits seem to keep giving their all for my selfish desires. And what do I do with their sacrifices? Nothing. I move on, because one thing or another turned their sacrifices into being almost meaningless.

No Reggie, not quite right. Hm? Sylphie didn’t just help you save the beavers. She saved you too, and you’re still here, and still fighting, to protect everyone, even spirits in the elemental realm adjacent to Rayileklia. The lightning spiritswarm saved you after you had already saved them. Whether they survived that last skirmish, piloting Big O’Kuel, we don’t know. Maybe they abandoned the robot and joined the lightning of the Worldstorm. For all we know, they could be one of those rivers of lightning passing beneath us right now.

You living is not a meaningless sacrifice. Don’t get a big head about it, but you can honor their sacrifices by continuing to save and protect as many others as possible. Hm, I suppose so. Welp. Here comes the next bit of Worldstorm. Then we’re in the thick of it, eh Reggie? Yup. I cross my forearms in front of my face, bringing my knees up to my chin, and lean hard into rolling my momentum. Like a spinning cannonball I shoot out the bottom of the second segment of the Worldstorm.

Using every bit of internal force I can muster, dragging a river of lightning with my QCR number 4, the cursed greaves, I spin down towards the muddy soil below, covered in a shell of lightning. Of course, it’s not just muddy soil below me. It’s thousands and thousands of kobolds and Draconiacs and human-form dragons. Time to piss some people off Reggie.

Crashing down atop someone I’m almost certain is a psy-mage, pasting them beneath me as if I were an Adamantite cannonball, I use the squelch and crunch of their bones to soften my landing. I crack my neck and roll my rotator cuffs while doffing my cursed greaves, unleashing a massive sphere of lightning. Standing from my three-point landing, I continue stretching and slowly striding forth from the crater I’ve created, amongst an impressive pile of corpses.

I can’t afford to grimace, or give up the goat, so instead, I grin, and call out, “Yeah. It’s Reggie Shellcracker, Hero of the Order of the Onyx Dawn. Again. I’m back. Didja miss me?”

Predictably, it has the desired effect of whipping my foes into a frenetic frenzy of frothing madness. Well, maybe not madness, more like anger, but probably also that. Reggie? Mhm? Don’t get pedantic with the snarling horde. Pft, snorting a laugh, I agree with myself, which is probably the stupidest phrase my brain has uttered… in the last few minutes. I’m sure I’ll top it sometime, at some point, during this fight.

Normally, I’d be averse to using *people* to block attacks. But these people are both Terrorzin’s forces, and corpses that I don’t want to have to fight a second or third time if Terrorzin’s necromancers have the ability to animate them. Breath weapons coming my way I can mostly ignore, but spells coming my way, I fling corpses in front of with my TK grips. It’s brutal, but efficient. Especially considering how many of the spells are pure disintegration beams.

That’s sixth tier magic at least, right? Crap on a cracker. That’s no small feat to have several casters at that tier of power. Even worse is the fact that there’s friggin’ hundreds of the motherglubbers bunched up right here, and they had been intending to use those disintegrations and other magic to finish carving up my mountainous blockade. Reggie? Mhm? Did you ever think you’d be just striding towards a bunch of disintegration-casting mages, flinging the corpses of their allies into the path of their blasts?

No, of course not. Why would that thought have ever occurred to me to have? What even fraction of what’s going on right now is in the least bit normal, and in the realm of what any reasonable being would imagine themselves ever doing? Pft. Reasonable being Reggie? Oh shut up. Heh, okay, alright, I admit it. It’s sorta funny. Me calling myself a reasonable being, or even implying it.

Gosh, with how much I’ve been worrying, and how much farther we have to go, I’m almost calm, despite being surrounded by death-dealing and disintegration-wielding foes. Like, I’m literally juggling the corpses of my foes with telekinetic grips, flinging them into the path of beam after beam. I conjure my twelve mini meteors that spiral about me in helix patterns just so that they might intercept a few beams that I miss or can’t block in time with corpses or Terrorzin’s own forces.

What I wouldn’t give to have the meteor spell available to me at a reasonable SP cost right now. I could probably take out three thousand or so of Terrorzin’s forces in a single cast, easy, with how condensed these morons are packed. My brain isn’t even registering the scenery, or setting, or foes. It’s solely focused on incoming attacks. That’s probably for the best. Hey Reggie. Mhm? Wanna try an old standby?

What, this early in the game? Yeah, why not? Alright, I guess. Oh, good timing. I sense a shift in the tide, as my foes begin to take another tack. They’ve stopped slinging spells, so that they don’t hit their allies who are closing in, and are about to swarm me. Wearing the smuggest grin I’ve ever worn, with my left brow raised, I query, “Really? Do none of you remember that I’m packing more than telekinesis?”

Frostburn’s slashblast, ice-rune empowered knife, non-spelliform empowered cold rune, a free cone of cold boosted by The Platinum’s extended metamagics, and another non-spelliform empowered cold rune. What does all that equal? A tsunami of ice conjured in an instant, stretching from the ground to the Worldstorm, washing out west across the battlefield, encasing my foes. I know plenty will survive that, and might even teleport out on top of me or towards my friends waiting on the other side of the blockade.

That’s why I’m not just sitting with my thumb up my rear twiddling. Fire-rune empowered knife, non-spelliform empowered flame rune, fireball from the staff, extra non-spelliform empowered flame rune, and calling FFS from the other side of the veil into being. Add all that together, pointed at a glacier, and what do you get? The fastest evaporation and biggest steam explosion the face of Rayileklia’s ever seen on its surface.

I have to engage my runic clip that prevents knockback while crossing my forearms in front of my face to brace against my own blast. It rocks the canyon walls around us, shaking and crumbling stone, while nearly atomizing Terrorzin’s forces in probably a quarter mile radius. Thanks FFS. Whew. There’s rockslides aplenty happening now, and the stone and soil are shifting beneath me, as well as elsewhere on the battlefield.

Oh hey, look at that. Caverns to the ‘Neath. I’m about to go be a cocky sonnova bleeping bleep. Disengaging the runic clip that locks me in position, I leap into a backflip while holding my breath, and boost myself into several more backflips towards the east with my telekinetic squares. My Adamantite form is wearing off, from the crashdown strike plus weathering my own steam explosion face-first front-and-center. At least it wasn’t in an enclosed space this time, so the concussive force wasn’t rebounding exponentially against itself and me.

I allow myself to pant for breath a bit as I lean up against the rubble of Wistenzlia Peak that I’d moved into Vieriss Valley’s pass. I cockily float as if I’m laying in a hammock, gathering my wits, and catching my breath. I’m pretty sure that even without the scrying goggles showing that I’m here, Teuila would’ve gotten the signal that I’ve arrived, after all that. Pft. Checking in on her, it seems her and Yui have routed the entirety of the Spellknights who’d made it through the blockade prior to now.

Terrorzin’s forces have done some serious damage to the blockade with their disintegrations and other magics. To be fair, me tossing out a nearly-nuke-worthy explosion just off to the west of the blockade didn’t help matters either. Pft. Snrk. Phew, deep breaths Reggie. Between yesterday, today’s antics of Teuila, Yui, and me, what are we looking at? Let’s say a few dozen foes per maneuver, plus a couple hundred to a thousand foes each for the big bombs. Hm.

Assuming say about twelve square feet top-down style per one of Terrorzin’s forces, a really rough estimate, then yeah, my little moves and attacks where they were packed in as tightly as could be, that hit a ten to twenty foot radius are taking out about three dozen or so foes per. I lean my head to the left and conjure a TK square at an angle to deflect an incoming javelin. Grumping mostly to myself, I complain silently, “Hey, I’m busy doing math here dickweasel.” Speaking of weasels, “Let’s go, I choose you giant dire shadow weasel!”

Wow that’s, oof. That’s pretty vicious. I don’t think I’ve heard a Spellknight ever shriek in terror of a weasel before, at least not audibly due to how many other sounds were drowning things out. Anyway, where was I? Math, right? Yeah. Floating here like I’m in a hammock, leaned up against the blockade I caused yesterday, I dig some snacks out of my interdimensional sacks, and, well, chow down while contemplating.

Right, so say three to four dozen foes on my little maneuvers, but how much for Wistenzlia Peak’s fall, and the glacier and steam explosions just now? They really weren’t expecting Wistenzlia, but they also weren’t packed shoulder-to-shoulder right in the crash zone. Especially since so many of them were chasing me *into* Wistenzlia Peak through tunnels. Though that makes the calcs even harder actually. Reggie? Mhm? Don’t you think you could have found a more appropriate time to ponder these calculations? I’unno, maybe, why?

Dodging a necrotizing ray, my mental self casts me a dubious glance, at which I chuckle. Right, right, I get it. Still, I think I did more damage to the horde last night than I realized. Holding a breath, I kick up into a kip up, flip forward, and leap off a telekinetic square I conjure mid-air at a forty-five degree downward angle. Drawing Frostburn, I let my velocity carry me past the necromancer who’d fired at me, holding it at neck level, and pulling. Flicking sizzling blood free of the blade, I sheathe Frostburn in one smooth motion as I hear the head of my foe plop into the mud behind me.

Right. No more fooling around I guess.