Enjoy today's chapter and have a great weekend. Fun stuff coming in the next few chapters -- I hope :)

-Plum

46 – Separation

Andy followed Blondie through the door, Jace and Lucy close behind. The hallway shook and shuddered. Plaster and adobe dust filled the air. “Down around the corner,” Blondie yelled over the crashes and buzzing din. Lentiss soldiers were swarming the building, and their clicking vocalizations had become an endless droning roar. “There’s a craft room or something, but the bugs are blocking the way!”

Andy nodded and charged ahead, once again wishing he was in his Brimstone Stalker class, though he supposed Hellfire Miasma would probably be overkill, especially with friendly survivors around. He covered the ground twice as fast as the others, and when he slid around the corner, he came face to face with a mob of Lentiss soldiers.

They’d come through the exterior wall. A great hole was there, and Andy could hear the deeper roaring clicks of another Behemoth. He hoped it would stay outside long enough for them to fight through to the last survivors. A glance at his Status Sheet told him he’d have plenty of mana; he was already up to 140 after just a few seconds of running.

One of the soldiers charged him, but Andy felt like he could see its swipes coming before they even happened. He dodged them easily and stabbed Scirocco into the spots where he felt the insect was the weakest. Unlike that of the Behemoth or the Thresher, the soldier’s carapace was no match for Scirocco. The spear shrieked his battle lust as he punched through the bug’s natural armor again and again. On the fourth blow, a jolt of lightning rippled through the soldier and it fell, twitching.

By then, Jace and the others had caught up. Andy and Jace pushed forward, and Lucy shot over their heads, raining fiery arrows down on the insects. Every few seconds, Blondie would lift her staff and a ball of bluish-purple tinted mana would corkscrew through the air, smashing into one of the insects and sending it staggering. Sometimes her spell even cracked their carapaces.

The Lentiss soldiers fell one by one. Jace wasn’t fast enough to dodge their attacks, but he’d picked up an unbroken shield from somewhere, and he was deft at hunkering behind it when they pushed forward. To Andy, dodging the creatures’ attacks was child’s play.

Everything was going well; only two more Lentiss were between them and the heavy door at the end of the corridor, but Andy didn’t let himself celebrate, not when there was a Behemoth just on the other side of the wall, even if it was yard-thick adobe.

When they reached the hole and he peered out, Andy’s eyes widened—there were two Behemoths out there, though they seemed preoccupied with trying to destroy—or climb—one of the sturdy bell towers. Glancing up to the top, he saw why. A man was there, his heavy black coat whipping in the wind as he held aloft a glinting golden wand. It was clear to Andy, sensing the wind-flavored mana, that the guy was some kind of Elementalist. He was using the wind to hurl the Lentiss soldiers around, smashing them into the Behemoths and Threshers to keep them away from himself.

Somehow, he sensed Andy looking at him, and he looked down. When they locked eyes, the man shook his head, and the gesture said a lot—he wanted Andy to continue on his mission to save the others. During that brief exchange, Lucy and the others had killed the last of the Lentiss in the hallway and Andy hurried forward, waving for the others to follow.

“That guy’s distracting the Behemoths for us.”

“That’s Silas!” Blondie cried. “I thought he was dead!”

“Hurry,” Jace said, giving her a shove toward the door.

“We should help—”

“I will,” Andy replied, “after.” With that, he pounded on the doors, and yelled, “Let us in!”

Blondie joined in, banging her staff on the wood. “It’s us! Open!”

Andy heard furniture shifting, and then the doors rattled as someone removed the last of the barricade and pulled them open. As soon as a gap appeared between the doors, Andy pushed his way through. The smell of fear, vomit, and urine assailed his sensitive senses as he took in the scene—a dozen kids from toddlers to teens, and four adults.

It was a low-ceilinged room with narrow windows which were blocked with hard-packed dirt. When he realized that, Andy looked to the floor and saw that the tiles were ripped up and a deep hole had been dug—but not with a shovel. Someone in the room had used some kind of earth magic; he could feel it lingering in the air.

“Listen!” Andy yelled. “I’m going to open a magical passage. Run through it! You’ll be safe on the other side.” As he lifted his left hand and began sketching the glyph for the Greater Axiom of Passage, he turned to face Lucy and the others. “You guys, too. I promise I’ll be there soon, but I have to try to help that dude—Silas.”

“We can help, too,” Jace replied, shaking his head.

“Rather you two didn’t risk your necks,” Andy said, grunting softly as he poured mana into the glyph and ripped the passage open, connecting the dark, dank room with Mesquite Mesa. “Go!” he yelled.

As the survivors, ushered by Blondie, ran through his passage, Lucy said, “We have every right to risk our lives. Besides, you’re not in your best class for soloing an army of bugs!”

Andy frowned at her, but he couldn’t argue. As the last of the kids went through the passage, followed by the adults, he said, “Go, Blondie. They’ll need help with those kids.”

She looked at him for a few seconds, and then slowly nodded. “I’m almost out of mana, anyway.” She didn’t wait for him to urge her again but charged headlong into his passage. Andy cut off the flow of mana and glanced at his Status Sheet. “I need mana before we help that guy. Down to less than twenty.”

Jace ran to the door and peered out. “Nothing in the hallway yet. I’ll go look through the hole—see if that dude’s even still alive.”

Andy nodded, leaning on Scirocco as he looked at Lucy. She smiled fiercely. “We did it. I mean, for the most part. We saved a lot of people, Andy.”

Her smile was infectious, and he returned it. “We sure did, Luce. How’s your mana?”

“Plenty. My fire arrows don’t cost that much.”

He nodded, checking his mana. It was climbing fast—already near a hundred. “I’ll be ready to try something soon, but…” He trailed off as he looked at his status sheet. “I think I’ll spend some points on the spell I used to break the Behemoth’s armor. Should make it easier for you and Jace to kill them.”

Lucy nodded. “Sounds good.”

Before he could second-guess himself and get distracted by combat, Andy quickly put his last two Improvement Points into the Axiom of Separation, bringing it to rank four. He quickly reviewed the description, checking to see if something changed:

Axiom of Separation – Bound: You draw an axiom that declares a target is not a single, unified whole. For a short time, its components are treated as distinct rather than continuous, weakening cohesion and even separating them along natural boundaries such as seams, joints, or layered structures if the caster can overcome natural resistances. Mana Cost: 65.

“Heh,” he said. “Only thing that changed on the description was the mana cost. It went up by ten.”

“It’ll probably work better, though,” Lucy said.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

Jace came running back in. “Dude’s still at it, but I think he’s running out of mana—more and more bugs get on the tower before he blows them off.”

“We’ll take out the Behemoths,” Andy said. “That’ll shift the tide out there.”

“I mean, assuming more don’t come,” Jace said.

Andy shrugged. “Let’s try it. Just another couple of minutes for my mana—almost there.”

“I’ll go watch him again,” Jace said, slipping out. Andy stared at Lucy, and she stared back.

“Intense,” he said after a dozen seconds of silence.

She nodded, then urgently grasped the front of his jacket and tugged, pulling his face closer so she could kiss him. When they separated, she said, “Just in case.”

“Don’t…” Andy shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. It wasn’t normal for people to have to keep risking their lives, but that was the new reality they were living in.

Another minute passed, and then Jace appeared in the doorway. “I think he’s about to go down!”

Andy nodded. “I’ve got enough for a couple spells, and I’ll keep regenerating as we fight.”

“If we have to run for it, come back to this room!” Lucy added, as they all hurried into the corridor and jogged to the breach in the wall.

“Right!” Jace said, stepping into the opening, shield up. More than a dozen Lentiss soldiers swarmed the nearby roof and the sides of the tower. As for the two Behemoths, they were about fifteen yards away, one of them on the near side of the bell tower and the other just around the corner. Both were clearly in view. “Dude,” Jace whispered, glancing at Andy. “It’s going to be dicey to attack one of them. I mean if the other helps.”

“We gotta kill them fast. I’ll try to wreck their armor.” He looked at Lucy. “Don’t hold back.”

She nodded, pulling her quiver around her hip so her physical arrows were closer to hand. “I’ll use my good arrows.”

“Hey,” Jace said, looking at them both. “The System thinks we’re still in it—no reward for fighting our way to those kids or getting them out.”

Andy nodded, face grim. “I think it’s waiting to see what we do here.”

“Let’s fuckin’ save that dude, then!” Jace thumped his shield, stepping through the broken wall.

Andy followed, but not before locking eyes with Lucy. “Don’t be too stubborn to fall back if we get overrun.”

She stared at him for a moment, then nodded quickly. “I want to live, don’t worry.”

With that, Andy turned and, with Jace right beside him, charged the closest Behemoth. They took a few steps, and then he threw his left hand up and scrawled out the glyph for the Axiom of Separation. He’d never know how big a part his increased Will attribute played in the result or if it was just a function of the two Improvement Points he’d put into the spell. He figured it was some combination of the two.

Whatever the case, he felt his intention batter aside Behemoth’s Will. He felt his mana slip inside its carapace, slicing like a knife as he carved out a new reality: the armored shell wasn’t a whole exoskeleton; it was a hundred separate pieces. The deep green shell broke apart at the seams, and blue fluid sprayed forth like dozens of leaking hydraulic hoses. The Behemoth screeched its chittering agony and fell back, only for two of Lucy’s arrows, trailing streaks of purple smoke, to pound into the top of its thorax, driving deep into its torso.

Andy stared. The Behemoth was dead.

“Holy shit!” Jace laughed, raising his shield and approaching the second giant monster, which had just realized its partner was dead. Its legs crunched through the adobe as it slid off the tower to face them.

Andy shook off his stunned disbelief and lifted his left hand. The Behemoth clicked and snapped its mandibles. It swiped its scythe-like front legs through the air, and Andy cast Axiom of Separation again. This time, he felt more resistance—maybe because he hadn’t caught the creature by surprise, but he battered it down, imposing his will, and driving the mana for the spell into the glyph.

Even as the Behemoth lunged at Jace, driving one clawed leg through his shield, Andy’s spell took hold and its carapace came apart. Blue blood erupted in geysers and Lucy pumped more arrows through the newly enlarged gaps between each section of the monster’s armor. Jace staggered back as the giant insect fell toward him, dropping his shield. He was already crowing in victory, raising his fist in the air—then a Thresher dropped out of the sky.

Andy saw it like it was happening in slow motion—to him, he supposed, it was. The bug was coming straight for Jace, its bladed forearms raised high, ready to dice him to pieces. Andy started to cast another Axiom of Separation, but the glyph wouldn’t take shape; he was just shy of the mana he needed. Jace stumbled back a step, too slow to save himself.

Andy thought about stabbing the creature with Scirocco, but he knew, unless he got lucky and Scirocco called down a true lightning strike, he’d fail to drive the giant insect off course; it would still slice Jace in half.

Feeling the fractions of a second bleeding by, he settled on the only option his frantic mind could devise: fast as a striking cobra, he took a lunging step and lifted his other leg, kicking Jace in the shoulder and sending him flying. The Lentiss Thresher’s blades cut empty air—for the most part. One of them caught Andy’s leg right at the shin and sliced clean through, sending his ankle and left foot flipping through the air.

To his credit, maybe because of how sharp and how fast the thing had cut through his limb, Andy didn’t fall. He barely felt the impact, but he caught himself on his right foot, hopping in place as he looked with stunned bewilderment at his severed limb. Lucy screamed his name, and he saw more arrows trailing purple smoke pound into the side of the Thresher’s winged lower torso. Jace was standing up, and thanks to his enhanced Perception, Andy knew the Elementalist was coming down from the tower—he could feel his wind-flavored mana.

Andy steeled himself and, so fast that his fingers were a blur, he drew the Axiom of Separation again. As he’d hoped, he’d continued to regenerate mana during the scuffle. This time, the glyph took shape. To his satisfaction, he easily battered down the insect’s Will, and quite literally tore the Thresher apart. Blue blood showered the scene, and Andy’s leg began to spurt red blood to mingle with it on the rubble.

“Fuck, dude!” Jace screamed, charging over to him.

Andy put one hand on his shoulder and leaned on his spear. Meanwhile, the man they’d come to rescue settled down on the ground in front of them as gently as a feather. He nodded toward the roof. “I blew them off, but I’m about out of mana. Let’s get you inside.”

Suddenly Lucy was there, shoving a bottle of Bea’s water against Andy’s lips. He drank it, sighing with relief as the blood stopped spurting from his stump. “Andy!” she said, face pale with shocked concern.

He shook his head. “It’ll be all right. Help me get inside.” He paused and added, "Uh, Jace, can you grab my foot?"