Icarus Awakens

Jeras had taken far longer to climb the Spire than the inferno in his chest had desired, but he was finally here. There were two in his way when he reached the top, but he sensed no threat from them. Judging by their appearance they were heavily injured, and it didn’t take much imagination to consider how.

He didn’t notice how the Eye or the Spires had changed. Daniel was just a yellowish blur in the distance. Casia was his only target. “You killed her. You killed them all.” Jeras breathed heavily, both hands on his greatsword. He was preparing to charge when his target flew towards him, a hand breaking through his armor before he could react. The hand was reaching inside of him. This must have been just what Kelra had felt, with one exception.

A wind blew him away, suddenly. Casia regarded the yellow blur in the distance before her eyebrows raised. What she’d pulled from his chest was just undifferentiated red mass. Jeras felt his flesh writhing as it brought itself back together. This wasn’t Regeneration. His body wasn’t returning to a livable condition, it was just bringing itself back to its basic shape. From the powers he’d gained by the bond, it was clear this was a one-way trip.

Hellbound Vigor*. Mark of Vengeance. Pyrrhic Stand*. Two of the names in his head had asterisks. He couldn’t care less about that. Either way, Casia seemed to finally recognize something when she took a closer look. “You have a Vengeance Bond. Who are you to awaken something like this?”

“Jeras Stillfeather. Your death.”

“Hardly.” With all the advantages the Octyrrum had given him to end this monster, she was still far faster than he was. Casia didn’t try to punch into him again but instead slammed into his body with hers. Knocked down and pinned, he saw a pale blue beam project from the distant Moon Spire. It flowed around Casia and froze him. Before the bond he would have died.

Now, after a few seconds had passed, he was able to feebly swing his sword towards the foe above him. His continued survival was taking something, but Jeras didn’t know what it was. He didn’t care. Casia would die by his hand. Lightning struck him then, but instead of hurting him, it flowed around him and shocked his target causing her to recoil. He looked up and saw the yellow blur in the distance had dimmed to become a humanoid outline. Was that an ally? “Her life is mine!”

“I don’t care who kills her,” the distant human responded furiously. “Only that she dies.” Jeras thought for a second and decided he liked that answer.

…

Alright. She can’t kill him, somehow. But she’s still too fast. Worse, Daniel’s lightning shield could only cover one person at a time. He was inundated with mana, but his durability hadn’t changed. Actually, it was far worse now that Regeneration wasn’t working. All of his normal powers were locked.

Or were they? Daniel finally noticed that an orange wedge was repeatedly flashing over Casia’s head. Khare? With Lograve… not here, their Telepathic Link was gone. Their team hadn’t normally had that advantage, however, and Daniel could tell Khare wanted to line up a shot. How, they’re, oh. Back at the entrance of the Sun Spire, it was not Khare, but Khiat holding her bow. On the arrow was a bright, glowing cylinder he’d never seen before. Thinking back to everything Khare had been trying to tell them, it began to make sense. Was this what Khare had meant by sunlight?

He still had friends here, and they needed his help. Casia moved far too quickly for Khiat to ever hope to hit, to say nothing of the Shroud barrier around her. The moment they attack her she’ll go after them, too. Unless the dusker had something ridiculous to pull out, that wouldn’t end well. I need to figure out how this new magic works.

In the distance, Casia and Jeras were fighting, giving Daniel time. It looked like the murderer would have preferred to finish him while he was unprotected, but something was forcing her to fight. He’s drawing aggro? It’s like a taunt effect. Someone else attacking Casia could break it. He watched as she kept an exact distance away from Jeras, about ten or so meters, while summoning more artillery fire from the Spires surrounding them. That was weakening the shield around Jeras, but leaving the Vanguard otherwise untouched.

She can’t directly attack when the lightning barrier is up. If we can pin her down, there’s not much she can do. The recoil from her contacting the freshly summoned shield had certainly seemed painful, and it had required Casia to shed parts of her body that had been too damaged. The Spires were growing less responsive as well from overuse. All except Wing Spire, which Casia hadn’t used yet. Daniel refreshed the lightning shield on Jeras by dismissing the original, but it didn’t seem like that was doing anything but continue the stalemate.

Daniel looked around, mind whirring, and came to a simple conclusion. There wasn’t any way the shield would help them in the long run. But he had to do something with the energy from the storm above. With little else to target, Daniel decided to attack the very thing he was trying to save.

…

Casia felt the hand of the gods here, acting against her. First, a high-level Proxy had revealed itself hiding amongst normal hunters, and now someone had developed a Vengeance Bond against her. That was as rare as a Tyrant developing naturally and, worse, was an uneven bond. The one taking revenge gained all the benefits, though in this case Casia had no doubt there were also drawbacks.

She was directing the Spires around her to target Jeras, forced to by a power that bypassed her normal resistance, when his shield vanished and lightning came down on the Sun Spire. The gem atop it cracked, losing some of its light. Casia tried willing it to repair itself, but that seemed impossible. Her very presence being responsible for the tower’s ongoing destruction may have had something to do with it.

Her fury turned towards the Proxy near the center of the Eye, but the power binding her to the Vanguard still held. The irony of being forced to face an unkillable foe in close range did not escape her. Casia readied the Moon Spire to attack when a thought occurred to her. These gems were made with the intent to repel invasions in mind, but what kind of army didn’t involve mid or high level combatants? Would Aughal’s Spoke, one of the most protective in the world, not provide a countermeasure there?

The attacks from each so far had been light-based, no doubt using the near constant sunlight the Spires were exposed to during the day to build up power. Were it daytime now she doubted the Spire gems would lose power. They would probably grow stronger. While she did not have that advantage, there was something to consider. Light could be manipulated.

Casia enforced her will, creating a lens out of the stonework surrounding the Moon Spire’s gem. The material making them up was completely versatile, able to transition into various shapes and materials. Originally the Wing Spire had not had balconies, and the Moon Spire hadn’t been as accommodating for duskers. She couldn’t repair what had been damaged, but what was still there could be molded by her will. Those in power had always been able to shape the Spoke to their liking.

The ray that fired this time was condensed. It still lost some of its potency crossing the Eye, but it pierced through the renewed lightning shield around Jeras like a lance and instantly froze his upper half. Without that damned shield, Casia was able to rush over and shatter him to pieces. She had a feeling the man wasn’t dead, but to her satisfaction she found the effect forcing her to target him was gone.

That just left the Proxy. And the two others now sheltering in the Sun Spire, but she both couldn’t get to them without leaving the Eye and couldn’t hit them with the rays from any of the Spires. She’d just kill the Proxy then, throw this Jeras off the Eye, and wait out the destruction without any further interruptions. Casia had known it wouldn’t be instantaneous, but the will of the city was far less fragile than she’d expected. Damn that rogue Tyrant.

Casia manipulated the Shroud around her forward, preparing to crash into the Proxy like a mounted Knight adjusting her lance, when a burst of wind launched the man upwards. It was a similar thing that gestalt had tried with Rasalia, but unfortunately it worked this time. He must have caught on to one of the flaws in this method, which was that she had to manually adjust her speed and fight the momentum of each prior movement.

While the Proxy had some limit on the lightning he could use, this wind power seemed to use less mana and not require active channeling. She also got the sense it was potent enough to have given her trouble before taking control of the Spoke, though both of them had moved past the limits of most mortals by now.

“You can’t evade me forever,” she taunted him.

Lightning came down in reply when the man was at the height of his jump, surrounding him once more. She heard his voice after the rumble of thunder. “Pretty sure I can.”

Casia waited for him to fall back to the Eye, or for the Proxy to summon a burst of wind that would signal an opening. She’d caught on to the fact that they could both only call upon one of their powers at a time and was currently adjusting lenses on each of the Spires to track him. However, the Proxy didn’t come back down.

…

When Daniel had thought earlier that his class was useless due to the mana surge within him, he was only half right. It had taken him longer to think of than it should have. Now, he flew through the air with most of the momentum from the prior jump. On his back were the, admittedly gaudy, golden lightning wings. They didn’t let him fly without the heliorite boost, just reduced the rate at which he fell. The bursts of wind he was familiarizing himself with could be a good replacement. He was saving the wings’ ability for later.

Casia chased after him. He was able to dodge by just moving out of the way the first time, but the second time the murderer approached at a speed that would allow her to adjust without overshooting. Daniel called upon the power within to blow him out of the way, which was when the Moon Spire fired its condensed beam at him.

Following the implied rules of this engagement, Daniel’s shield would have taken a great deal of damage, possibly failing to fully ward him from the cold damage. It was here that he began cheating. His other powers were locked due to the basic tenets of how powers worked. You couldn’t use two actively channeled abilities at the same time unless you’d practiced enough to combine two beforehand. The sheer mana running through him went further, somehow, to completely suppress everything else he’d once had.

Everything else having to do with Daniel. His wings still worked fine, and so did the special property afforded by making them with heliorite. So long as he kept the mana storm in him from leaking out into them, they would not break down like everything else he’d initially had on him. A golden light shot out from the bottom of the wings, propelling him further towards his target. There was a sharp cry behind him, and Daniel saw Casia recoil in surprise as some of her body began to harden.

Daniel hoped they were isolated enough that no duskers were affected, since the cast-off light was close enough to sunlight to damage or kill them. While this was a weapon against Casia, it was also a temporary burst. What was more important was it got him clear of the beam and closer to its source.

As Daniel reached the pale blue gem, he felt the mana radiating off of both it and himself. The air was suffused with raw power which his wings were absorbing, despite the fact that they normally required daylight to recharge. Using the time he’d bought, Daniel brought out one of the very last skab glands and broke it on the gem. The glue within had still held up despite the many weeks it’d been since he’d first acquired it. He slapped every explosive bolt on him, as well as the bag containing the spineshard marbles he’d made over the course of the night, onto the glob of glue and dove off before Casia could recover from the wings’ light.

The explosion caused by the next lightning strike was very satisfying. Enough of the gem had been destroyed that it faded entirely, removing one of Casia’s most potent weapons. All it had taken was, well, most of the cards he’d had. Every time he’d summoned lightning the cost had grown exponentially, and that last strike had cost about ten percent of his enormous mana pool. The storm must be running out of power. He had to find a way to destroy Casia, and quickly.

She pursued him like a banshee, for she was screaming at him now in frustration. Both flew through the air, both poorly. If either had been experienced in the unique methods they were using for propulsion it could have decided the fight. Instead, Daniel made it to where Jeras had mostly pieced himself back together.

“Can you make her attack you again?” Daniel asked quickly. The Vanguard took a moment to respond, literally not all there yet.

“Yes. She has to be close.”

“Then I’ll get her close.” Daniel went to grab the avianoid when the clear white light of the Wing Spire intensified, and he realized Casia hadn’t been holding back on that Spire. She’d been waiting for it to fully charge. The western Spire sent out a pulse of energy that, even far away, still felt like a depth charge to Daniel. The issue was it wasn’t aimed at him, but upwards. “Fuck!”

“What?” Jeras readied to dodge, but Daniel shook his head.

“That Spire is clearing my storm!”

…

Casia had noticed something odd about the Spire gems. The Sun and Moon Spires had predictable attacks compared to the other two. Rose Spire, with its emotional manipulation, was far odder and useless against her two opponents. So much so that she doubted that had been what the tower’s gem had originally done. Spokes were modeled after the public will that drove them, even if this one was currently commanded by one. That had an impact.

That wasn’t to say there was a vote held to determine the Spire’s functions. Casia guessed it just pulled from conceptual understandings and tied that to the purpose of defense. That left Wing Spire with its own curious effect. Something wind-related was an obvious connection to make, but clearing hazardous weather? That had to be related to the sandstorm Mark had summoned earlier. Just how malleable were these Spokes? It was probably the Tyrant class Casia had been forced to take for this plan to work, but she thought it was a shame this one wouldn’t last long enough for her to experiment.

Casia banished that thought. She wouldn’t be turned from her goals. When the Wing Spire was ready, she willed it to fire. The gem pulsed out mana with disrupting force and the clouds above tore apart. She understood little of how weather worked, other than that for a thunderstorm like this to form in a desert region would be very unnatural. The Proxy’s power was unable to overcome the weather clearing effect and Casia grinned as the moon revealed itself.

No more lightning from the heavens. The Proxy still had his shield, but that was all. The Vanguard she was hazily remembering now had the Vengeance Bond but little else. This would have all been over if it weren’t for the damage to the Moon Spire. Casia put the other one at about half power, and the decline in strength for each successive shot had grown. She could use it sparingly, or not at all. As for the Spires themselves?

Stone was crumbling down onto the streets. Anyone still in the area outside at this point deserved to catch some of the debris. The people inside the Spires didn’t have that choice, since the siege ward was still active in every place aside from the entryways onto the Eye. Casia had left that open since someone had needed to come up to kill the two Council members, or else their deaths wouldn’t have counted. With the towers crumbling, that seemed another aspect she couldn’t fully control.

What was important was that Casia had two things neither of her opponents had in combination: overwhelming force and near invulnerability. That, combined with time being on her side, made it so that she still didn’t fear a loss. Still, she’d kill these two if given the chance.

She’d had another idea about how to use the Spoke, and this one had none of the weaknesses of the gems. The Shroud. She’d tried to crush the Proxy with an invisible wall in a similar way she’d intended the Arcanist to die earlier, but it had had no effect. Similarly, the strangely unkillable man had enough strength to contest it for long enough to leave herself exposed. But there was another option.

Casia raised her hand, stopping in midair as a small stone was plucked from the Eye.