Millennial Mage

Tala snapped into action as the instructions came from Masters Clevnis and Meridius.

Their quickly pieced together redoubt was to be a fall-back point, but it wasn’t designed to stand up to Paragon—let alone Reforged—level threats. Thus, the time had come to strike out.

Meallain was going to keep the hunting cat engaged. She essentially could not use her magic at all due to her soul damage, but just holding the power within herself granted increased reactions and strength in a similar way to how Refined were generally improved by that advancement. Though, in her case—and in the case of all arcanes of a similar level—it was more extreme, but only lasted as long as she held sufficient power. When she was assigned to engage the large cat, the implication was almost explicitly stated that should she die in the attempt, that wouldn’t be too much of an issue… so long as she gave warning before she did so.

Rane and Master Girt were tasked with the cyclops, along with the fire wielding Arcane Hunter.

Tala was assigned to the scorpion looking creature.

And finally, two Arcane Hunters were assigned to each of the last two Reforged level creatures, Master Meridius partnering with the ice user against the conglomeration of limbs.

The goal was for Tala and Rane’s Defender unit—without Master Girt or Mistress Vanga of course—to work with the Talons and Terry to remove the Paragon level threats and the few lessers that were still scattered around the battlefield. Then, assuming no one was in dire straits, they would assist the Paragon closest to victory. At that point, they would turn and continue as such until all the greatest threats had been dealt with as well.

It was a solid plan as things went. Simple, easy to understand, and something that should survive first contact with the enemy.

Even as Alat conveyed all of this, Tala had lunged from the battlements, closing quickly on her target, ignoring the creatures who were on par with her and below—advancement wise—that she shot over.

That would have been rather foolish, but as she moved, Talons began to come into being in units of ten fighters, shields overlapping, and spears already lancing out.Two hundred Talons had been deemed ‘worthy’ of this clash, and that meant that all of a sudden, there were twenty groups of heavily armored, magically empowered soldiers, scything through the enemy ranks. Given that there were only twenty or so Paragon level threats and a scattering of lesser creatures left? The deployment was instantly effective.

The precision and execution of the Talons wasn’t perfect, and they started taking injuries rather quickly. None of the greater creatures died immediately, either, but with the lessers slain quickly by their blades—and by the efforts of the others leaving the walls—each group was able to begin surrounding their target, working to keep the given creature locked down until it could be finished off.

The Talons who were injured healed almost as quickly as Tala would have, even if their reserves of materials to pull from would be far more shallow. They simply hadn’t had the time to build up to her level of physical mass.

Terry flickered around between the various clashes, taking less than a second at any given one as he kept each of the conflicts from tipping against the Talons and Defenders.

But even taking note of those opening moments of the various clashes almost cost Tala, dearly.

The scorpion was oddly colored, most of its body being brown and of a wood-like texture, shot throughout with splintering cracks of violently glowing, hot pink.

The venom dripping from its upraised stinger was thick and white, reminding Tala of various remedies that she’d seen her father mix up oh so long ago.

Even as she came in, landing lightly some hundred feet in front of it, Tala could feel that something was off.

As she pulled her entire focus forward, fully onto the creature, she noticed the oddities a moment before it might have been too late.

The creature’s authority was rushing toward her at speeds akin to a charging bull, while to all other perceptions, it didn’t seem to be moving at all.

She dove to the side just in time to see the ground behind her explode with a heavy impact, the scorpion coming into her perception only after the hit landed. 𝘙ἈƝỗ₿ΕŜ

Something like delayed perception? How can it affect me? I’m not under its authority.

-Light, maybe? It’s delaying the light and sound from exiting its authority, thus there is no contest with you.-

That… shouldn’t work like that? Shouldn’t what we see be dimmer if that is the case? Or completely black because no light is getting through?

-I’m not sure, but I don’t think now is the time to debate this.-

Tala grunted, throwing her aura and authority outward in the tangible form of iron spikes, driving them into the ground to give her sway over the battlefield more resilience.

The scorpion was upon her again, now fully visible as it pressed through her aura and authority, remaining outside their domain but not still able to use the same trick as before.

The beast let out a strange, high-pitched, screeching chitter that set Tala’s teeth on edge.

Flow flashed out, clashing as a glaive against one claw before rebounding and blocking the much closer second claw in the form of a sword.

Tala then had to move forward, putting herself uncomfortably close to the human-sized face of the giant arachnid to dodge under the stinger, which slammed into the ground behind her.

She trusted her armor a great deal, but something about this creature made her want to be extra careful. Similarly with her healing and that venom…

Face to face with her opponent—even though she had her full defensive gear on, so she was behind a faceplate—she saw malice and hostile intelligence behind the many eyes.

Its mandibles clacked at her, trying to take a bite as it rushed forward before she could strike at its face. Tala bent backward, slashing Flow as a void-knife across the undercarriage of the beast in six quick strokes before it had fully overrode her.

The brown, wood-like chitin parted easily under the blade, but wherever Flow hit the pink cracks, it skipped over the material to plunge in again at the other side.

The gashes, even when they went in the full length of the blade, didn’t draw blood, or ichor, or whatever this thing had inside it.

It did elicit another chittering shriek, and the creature struck backward in response with its stinger. Tala barely rolled out of the way in time.

The scorpion was directly over one of her iron spikes, so Tala decided to do exactly as some had suggested so many times.

Her breath weapon only really had to come from between her teeth in order to be enshrouded in her containment magics, those which originated in her throat and mouth.

She could open the portal anywhere within her sphere of influence.

So, she did.

A small portal opened directly beneath the massive arachnid. Highly compressed air laden with dissolution magic blasted upward, igniting the air instantly even as it drilled into the belly of the beast.

The scorpion actually made things worse for itself as its legs each gripped into the ground, keeping it from being thrown off and away and allowing the full force of the blast to carve into it.

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Tala let out a relieved chuckle as her three-fold perception saw the attack about to punch through the top side, the magics fully encompassing the scorpion as she stepped further back.

Then, she frowned.

It… It was solid the entire way through. There were no organs, no viscera, no blood or fluids of any kind. There was only the brown and pink interspersed through the entirety of the creature.

As the last of the dissolution was expelled and the portal closed, the magic finally wrapped all the way around even the tip of the tail, seeming to settle into the beast somehow.

The hot pink cracks pulsed with light and all the dissolution power was drained inward.

A moment later, the arachnid burst like a stepped-on sand castle.

Each brown section was suddenly its own scorpion, the sizes varying from barely larger than her pinkie nail all the way up to some the size of her head, the rest running the gamut in between.

They no longer held a Reforged level aura—though, collectively they easily still had that much weight to them—instead, each now felt like a Paragon level threat in its own right. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the venom coming from their stingers still felt just as powerful as before.

To her threefold sight, Tala could see an odd connection remaining between what seemed to be the poison sac of each in the tip of their tail, as if that one part of each one were still united with all the others and the original whole.

But that was mostly inconsequential, as Tala launched a full third of her siege orb pairs into the oncoming tide of horrid little monsters before opening another portal into her artificial lung on the head of a spike off to her right to begin drawing in air once more. She feared that she’d need it again all too soon.

Rust, rust. Rust! ALAT!!!

The rippling concussion of explosions from her siege orbs sent cold rippling outward in a wave, flash freezing the high grass all around them before the wind that the sudden temperature change caused shattered the hardened vegetation.

The scorpions weren’t obliterated as she’d hoped—though not expected—even if some were crushed by being at the epicenters of the various blasts. Instead, most were simply coated with a thin layer of ice and slowed to an absolute crawl.

-Well, they were all crawling to begin with.-

I hate you sometimes. Do you have anything helpful to suggest?

-Gravity amplification? So long as you don’t target their stingers, you should be able to overwhelm them one by one, maybe even in batches.-

Tala began to do just that, their slowed state likely aiding in the process as she targeted the biggest of them first.

At the same time, she pulled out her tungsten ball and rod and began slamming those into the smallest of the scorpions, attempting to turn them into paste in a more traditional manner.

There has to be a better solution than this! It’s going to take ages, and it’s not like most can help me.

-Communicating with the others… Got it! The fire Paragon will interfere in—- Alat cut off as an alien, if familiar, authority seemed to request to act within Tala’s field of power. She immediately allowed the working and a column of fire slammed down right on top of the still spreading pile.

The screeches of agonized denial didn’t last long, and the other Paragon was able to return his attention to his own fight against an opponent that was better matched against him. His fire only caused severe burns on the cyclops, which was useful, but not quite as obliterating as would have been ideal.

-Well, to be fair, he likely wouldn’t have been as effective against the big scorpion.-

Tala was about to respond, when she saw the few hundred little scorpions, honing in on her position, moving far, far faster than should be possible.

They had seemingly been outside of the effective radius of both her spheres and the fire-pillar.

Tala almost shrieked like one of her sisters when they saw a spider… or scorpion to be honest, but she managed to keep her composure if just barely.

Thinking quickly, Tala opened a portal with a bottom edge cutting well into the dirt. It rose two feet in height and curved out and away from her, hemming in all the scorpions that she could see.

She’d had to stop filling her artificial lung momentarily, but as the new portal opened into that space again, she was able to begin pulling in air again almost immediately.

The arachnids ran into the portal like it was a wall, their very will and existence rejecting the possibility of entering so completely into her authority, rendering the portal a more effective barrier than many materials would have been. Even the air rushing past them couldn’t force them through against their will.

Well… that was effective, even if not in the way that I had intended.

-Differently effective?-

Exactly. It also reminded Tala of the merchant, Mara, and how the woman couldn’t truly enter Ironhold. I wonder if her concept is similar to how Reality is ticked off right now and unwilling to make concessions?

-Maybe? Do we really want to think about that, now?-

…Fair.

Tala was able to expand the portal even after it was opened, so she tried to make it a full circle. Unfortunately, something seemed to prevent that.

Regardless, she’d managed to buy herself a bit of time as she absolutely dumped power into the void and iron spellform within her artificial lung, creating absolutely insane amounts of dissolution power every few seconds.

Come on! Go faster!

Finally, she was able to close her u-shaped portal and open her mouth to breath out destruction, only having the smallest amount of containment magic come into place.

Her attack washed over all those that she could see, and they puffed to dust before going up like a pitch-soaked bonfire.

Tala cut off her breath weapon at that point and let out a relieved sigh, even as she turned her attention outward once again.

She had just enough time to notice that the Talons, Terry, and her Defender unit were almost done working together to take down the last two Paragon level threats. Unfortunately, at that moment, she felt a sharp sting at her ankle.

She jerked her focus downward and found a minute scorpion, with its stinger through her armor and into her flesh underneath, the little rusting thing seemingly having disguised itself using whatever trick of authority the big one had used earlier.

The arachnid was radiating concentrated authority like the whole swarm, while being obviously physically quite frail… the stinger excepted.

Tala had an instant to grunt in surprise before the drop of thick, white venom breached her skin, the power and material of the injection expanding like the ripple on a pond, obliterating her flesh and bone as it went.

Oh…

There was less than an eyeblink of hesitation, then Tala moved faster than she ever had before.

Flow grew into a glaive. For perhaps the first time, the handle of the glaive extended down below Tala’s hand, and she slammed the butt of the staff down, crushing the scorpion with ease. Only then did she see the unified reality node of the scorpion splinter and fade away.

I should have been tracking that the whole time. But then wasn’t the time for self recrimination.

Even the near instant killing of the last scorpion had allowed the wave of goopification to reach her knee, her very biology becoming nothing but sludge that was no longer bound by her magics which had allowed the increase of her density.

As a result, the pressure inside her armored leg was growing incredibly high, and the resulting sludge was threatening to push up past the already fast wave of decay, and Tala did not like the implications of what that might cause.

Thus, with a single motion, Flow became a void-sword and slashed down, severing her leg mid-thigh, well above the wavefront of destruction.

Using her own authority over her now severed leg, Tala flung the appendage away even as she regrew another and sprang backward.

As the discarded leg hit the ground low down on their hill, it seemed almost to detonate with pressure, sending a fetid geyser fountaining up the next hill.

The smell was atrocious, even at a distance and through her armor, and she immediately sealed up what small air-gaps there had been.

A feeling of absolute wrongness radiated through her, belatedly, and she had to remove her faceplate almost instantly after sealing her armor in order to retch.

Thankfully, that passed relatively quickly, and she was able to seal away the smell once again and focus elsewhere once again.

She actually had the space to really do so this time.

Her mind immediately went to Rane, and she found him, a bit battered and bruised but mostly whole, facing the Reforged level cyclops.

Master Girt wasn’t visible, but his presence was evident due to just how ragged some of the cuts on the twenty foot tall creature were.

The wounds were generally burned as well, showing that the fire-based Paragon hadn’t been slacking, even if he did have to take advantage of the cuts others opened to make his attacks cause more than superficial damage.

As for the cyclops itself, the club it wielded was more akin to a greatsword with how thin it was in one dimension. Though, it didn’t actually have an edge, so club was still the best descriptor.

As she watched, Rane took another glancing hit, his magics only able to mitigate the damage due to the constricting authority of the beast as well as its speed and power.

Well, I’m going there. Alert those who need to know. Rane would probably be fine, but if she could do something to ensure that? She was going to.

-I am doing so now. The battle is going well. There are no dead, despite nearly a hundred casualties among the Talons. I was able to get each out in time as needed, before any of their ability to heal was fully overcome.-

Thank you, Alat. It’s good to have your assistance.

-I aim to please. Before we can go to Rane, we need to ensure we aren’t needed elsewhere.-

Fine. Let’s do that quickly.

It was time to finish this.