An Age of Mysterious Memories

Wait. Counterspell is the reactive portion of the dispellation magic. I can’t react because it works like a stack of spells hitting the weave of Rayileklia’s leylines in a certain order, and in paused time, there is no order. Friggin’ hell, collectible cardgame rules are less complex than this, and that’s saying a lot! Also, even if we could counter his spell here in stopped time, who’s to say he doesn’t have the juice to just cast it repeatedly? It’s already nearly impossible to even perform one spell during someone else’s timestop. Then, then, then what the eff can we do? Greater dispellation counters and dispels magic, but I can’t even—.

Reggie. Mhm? Dispel the timestop. Holycrapyes! Same spell, same focus, same brain, same runes, just target the timestop, and dogpile the caster before he can get his power word off. Go, go go go go go! Urrgghh it feels like I’m tearing part of my face through the frontal lobe of my brain and having an embolism simultaneously.

Mentally reciting my titles, reaching deep into the void that comprises my true self, I plead with “Nothing,” my Latent, to allow me to act within nothing, within the absence of time. To allow my willpower to manifest my spell in the absence of time without acting. To just do something, anything. More of a mantra to myself than anything else at this point, my brain recites over and over, “I’m Reggie Shellcracker, a Hero of the Order of the Onyx Dawn, an Archmage Aliased Schism, and I am the Void Dragon Honoris Causa!”

Suddenly my muscles spasm, as time begins to return to its normal flow, and my SP dumps a hundred thirty five into the dispellation of the stopped time. Instantly I’m diving forward, launching holy halefire doublebarreled crossbow bolts, slinging cantrips, and breathing lightning towards the mage. To say that he’s a bit spooked that not only has his timestop ended, but that someone already has a bead on him is an understatement. I conjure my telekinetic squares between his fingers, effing up his runecrafting mnemonic for the power word spell, essentially countering it without having to blow another hundred thirty five SP. The mage is sweating bullets now, even though all of my attacks are absorbed by some invisible field he’s got protecting himself.

Come on, come on, a little bit closer and we’ll just be the slow blade penetrating the shield ourselves. Come—. Oh come on! Coward! Where the hell did he blink off to? Glaring about, cranking my aura vision up to maximum, it seems like the trail leads back the way he came from. There’s a stench of rotten eggs, sulfur I take it, in the air. He must have used some item to escape, being afraid that I’d mess up or counter a teleportation spell. Mrgrgr. Vylon’s got his breath held, and his breath-weapon charging, which is good in general, but if he’d died, it might have exploded and taken us out. I’d bark orders for a strategy to counter the caster’s reappearance, but there’re no orders I can give that’d meaningfully help against someone that might just decide to stop time again if they’ve got the juice for it.

Instead, I grumble, “We’ve got at least one archmage on Terrorzin’s side already in on the action. He stopped time, and was going to blow his timestop to kill Vylon with a power word. Generally, any action taken on a creature or object in a moment between moments, when paused by magic—other than yourself—resumes the flow of time. I guess he figured taking Vylon off the board would have been worth it. I’m loathe to agree with the enemy, but that was a smart play.”

When Vylon blinks in surprise and pats himself down, I know I owe him an explanation, “I don’t know if you know about my retrocognition. I can perceive in paused time. I used to be able to send messages backwards in time too, on my home world. Doesn’t matter though. What matters is we’re in the thick of it, and every moment is life and death. Yui, Yuri, do you have any abjurative magics that can ward off instant death magics? Any death wards I guess?”

Thankfully, Ahliyuri responds, “Aye, I’ve got the ability to cast one, but only have the juice to lay down one in a given day. It lasts eight hours, sixteen if I prep right,” when I’m about to ask Yuri to utilize his spell, he abashedly rubs the back of his helmet and continues, “put it on Yui as soon as we met up.”

Right, right, that makes sense. The twins love each other more than life itself. Ahliyui slugs her brother hard enough in the shoulder to knock him off balance so that he staggers back a step. While he’s reeling, she whispers something in Draconic. I’m pretty sure she’s berating him for not using the magic on himself. Same Yui, same. Putting it on you is loving and all, but if that leaves him vulnerable, and he gets taken off the board, then for the rest of the week of the war, there are no more death wards at all.

As heartbreaking as it is, sometimes you have to prioritize your own surviv—, “Darn tootin’ ‘n’ straight shootin’ Airhead. You’d better remember that thought you just had,” Teulia interrupts my thought, leaving me chagrined. I’m certainly guilty of not prioritizing my own survival, quite a lot. Blushing fit to burn a hole as serious as that plasma-ball earlier, I offer a nervous chuckle, a half-grimacing grin, and awkward shrug to Teuila.

Of course, Te sticks her tongue out and raspberries me, mostly letting me off the hook. Mostly. Her gaze still carries a dubious subtle undertone. I know Te, I know. We *all* need to make it through this war. Checking in with Vylon, he catches himself nursing his shoulder and abruptly stops as I turn my attention towards him. Frowning, I raise my brows towards him, but he shakes his head, shrugging it off.

As Lil might say, Vylon, my dude, come on. It’s mega serious, mega mega mega serious if you are injured by using your Latent. Snrk. Ah Lil, such a goober. I love him so much. Rattling my skull, I return my focus to the wave of foes that are now strategically working out the gaps in Vylon’s Rend. Well, let’s put a damper on their day, shall we Te?

Grinning at me, Teuila summons lightning to Mjolnir, as I draw it down from the Worldstorm with my cursed greaves from QCR number four. Ow. I really need to train that organ. Erm, my EM Field organ. Te, for crying out loud, you don’t need to waggle your brows at the word organ. Pft. I can’t help smiling, despite rolling my eyes at her antics. This body’s still only like two or three days old or something. And unlike the form crafted together with everybody’s help, all the muscles, and various organs, are brand new and barely fully developed. They’re certainly not exercised to peak potential.

Teuila and I virtually blow a hole in the front line of Terrorzin’s onslaught, as we loose a combined lightning cascade together. Of course, human-form Blues, and any Bronzes—though I doubt there are any—survive just fine, as well as some of the foes wearing enchanted armor. In fact, the human-form Blues, and blue kobolds, loose their breath weapons in our direction. I’m pretty sure Teuila and I *both* roll our eyes as I draw their lightning attacks into a swirling sphere around me with my cursed greaves pulling inwards, while my EM field organ pushes outwards. With my organ—oh knock it off you goobers, jeeze—I coalesce the lightning into a floating orb next to me, and she bats it deep into the enemy horde like a baseball with Mjolnir when I doff the curse.

This whole time, since the plasma balls, there’s been this subtle rumble. And by that, I don’t mean the constant boom of the Worldstorm’s thunder. The vibration of the ground is pretty intense, but y’just get kind of numb to it, when it’s ceaseless like this. The encroaching horde pounding and plodding along their path to us is like its own unending mini-quake. Though this feels more intense than what I’d imagine a couple thousand soldiers managing across combinations of muddy soil and displaced bedrock and other stone.

There’s something charging, dashing up the ranks of Terrorzin’s forces, knocking them all aside. Somehow it continues, without being diced to bits, as it reaches Vylon’s Rends. Disconcertingly, Vylon winces, and massages his right shoulder, bicep, and elbow. I knew it. I won’t broadcast the cost of his Latent, but this creature pushing through it, we need to push back, before it breaks Vylon’s arm. Thankfully, Teuila and I charged up for just such an occasion. She grins at me and chucks Mjolnir at this monstrosity’s head, while I loose a spherical charge of lightning that I rotate around me once, twice, thrice, before slingshotting it into the horde.

The beast soaking up Vylon’s Rends is one of Terrorzin’s necromantic chimaeric monstrosities, like the things in the ShizTinth Stronghold. Worse, despite me and Teuila going ham on it, it’s still kicking, and making space for Terrorzin’s horde to get through, somehow pushing Vylon’s rent space out of the mouth of the tunnel. The sheer tenacity on this creature would be commendable, if, y’know, it weren’t a foe. Ahliyui and Ahliyuri, radiant and umbral Spellknights begin dueling the more well-armored foes making it out of the tunnel. I’m glad they’re taking swift action and downing foe after foe, sometimes on their own, sometimes back to back.

Glancing at Vylon, I’m about to ask him to rescind his Latent, when his right arm goes limp and the rent space fades away, allowing the beast the rest of the way through the tunnel, and opening a path for hundreds of Terrorzin’s forces to swarm us at once. Getting a better look at the creature up close, it’s like someone mixed the bones of a woolly mammoth with those of a sarcosuchus, or some other crocodilian. The thing barely fit up the hundred-odd meter tunnel, as that’s it’s approximate width.

Tusks longer than Lil’s wingspan jut out of this thing’s enormous face, and every move it makes seems to loose tons of sand from its form. I’d half guess it was simply animated sand, if it weren’t for the tusks, the scales, the bone, and stony dorsal spines. Despite the lightning of the Worldstorm illuminating it only in flashes and bursts, it’s easy to see its ochre, muddy brown palette. The thing’s mostly the color of dirt, which doesn’t help distinguish it from appearing to be covered in sand, silt, and soil.

Vylon, on the south side of this east-rushing creature, grips the thing by its right tusk that juts from its lower mandible, but he winces, lacking leverage due to the pain in his own right arm. His left arm is locked about the tusk, keeping the creature from advancing any further though, due to his enormitude and strength. Also, despite possibly aching, he’s blasting flame down its face and into the tunnel, where Terrorzin’s forces scatter in fear of the blaze. One of the eldest Golds on the planet? Yeah, even I don’t want to stand in his fire for too long. It’s almost strange to think that some of Terrorzin’s horde still have survival instincts, when they’re literally marching with the intent to raze the world.

Oddly as well, the creature seems barely fazed by Vylon’s blaze up close in its face. Parts of its dorsal ridge get glassed, proving that there are plenty of silicates clinging to its body, as if it were recently unearthed, like some terrifyingly gargantuan fossil. The rumble that I’d assumed was stronger due to the creature’s approach still continues, despite Vylon having it locked down. So I guess I was wrong to attribute it to the charge of this thing.

Could Terrorzin’s necromancers just randomly target anywhere, and pull up some long-lost skeleton creature like this? That seems a bit far-fetched, even with what I know magic’s capable of. Plus, I’m fairly certain this thing still has skin and scales. Well, more than fairly certain, I’m positive, because I can see them more and more the more sand is glassed along its body, or falls off its hide.

I see this mammoth-gator, this silt-odilian—now that it’s up close—that it waddles rather than runs, because its limbs are sorta flipper-like. Hey Reggie, hey Reggie. Mhm? What do most of the creatures in the ShizTinth stronghold have in common? Uh, I dunno, they were such disparate things, I guess for the most part, there were—there were two or more of them, I interrupt myself to answer myself. Like I’d surmised earlier, my brain has yet to come up with the stupidest thing it’s going to think all day. It just keeps raising the bar. Shaking my head at myself, I sigh while rolling my eyes. My brow quirks towards the bot I’d repurposed, which is settled in its position like a combination seismograph and geophone. This creature looks like it’s made for water rather than for land. Or…

Shouting, I leap skyward while dragging Yui and Yuri, and two bots into the air with my telekinesis, “Everybody off the ground now!”