Arcane Apocalypse ~ 152 - Part 3 (Patreon)

AN: Alright, this concludes the fight, and I am going on my break. See y'all on the 2nd of February! Hope the conclusion doesn't disappoint.

*****

Mia’s Spectral Blade spun through the air, racing after the fleeing burrower and the Werewolf King clinging to its back like a tick. By some miracle, the spell construct caught up, just barely. It struck the werewolf’s leg at the knee, tearing right through at the joint and continuing on, nearly cutting the burrower he was riding in half. Silver had apparently weakened the Werewolf King enough so that his bones could no longer halt Mia’s Blade. Camie shot a Blood Lance right through his chest too, but aside from those two attacks, the mass of bullets impacting him might have been the next most effective, what with his regeneration being slowed to a crawl.

Silver, it seemed, was even more effective than in the movies or myths. Mia made note of it, though she also swore she’d look into how she could work around the magic resistance everyone with a Full Dark Affinity apparently had beyond a certain Attunement. Not every Full Dark would also conveniently be a Werewolf with an extreme weakness to silver, and Mia was loath to leave her countermeasures at ‘have a QI fighter on hand to handle it for me’. 

Unless she could seal one in a scroll and shove that in her back pocket, it wasn’t a solution. No countermeasure that she couldn’t entirely control and carry with herself would be good enough. But those thoughts were for later; she had monsters to kill, and a werewolf to chase down, too. 

The numbers didn't look too bad at a glance. There were maybe a hundred monsters and thirty defenders, which should still have been an easy victory for them … had they not been fighting for so long. A lot of the magic-users were bordering on mana exhaustion, either with no more mana potions or with their energy channels too strained to take another vial. 

Mia was reasonably well off still, but that’s because her spells were rather economical compared to the Skills Elementalists made use of. The physical fighters didn’t have infinite stamina either, nor did the Ki users among those few who made use of that type of energy. 

As much as she wanted to charge off after the furry bastard and finish him off, Mia stayed where she was, teeth gritting as she fought Spectral Blade in one hand and Arcane Shield in the other. She was needed there to protect the others; if she left, the defence would probably crumble, especially since Camie would have followed her without question.

The battle turned into utter chaos as the monsters pressed in from all sides, forcing everyone to fight in close quarters. Mia used her Spectral Blade in quick pierces, sending it lunging out of her grasp only for a moment before yanking it right back. Just enough so its tip was sent right through even the toughest monsters by the spell’s kinetic component  — a metre, sometimes not even that. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, a rapid, frantic sound that accurately portrayed the terror she was trying her damnest to keep at bay. Death was always at arm’s length, one wrong move away. Melee was chaos. Mages like her weren’t meant to be fighting up close and personal like this, but she had no choice. 

They came at her, she bashed a goblin-like one away with her Shield, sent her Blade through a Brute’s chest, grabbed a feline one by the neck and pumped it full of arcane mana until its head fell off its neck, then yanked the Spectral Blade back through another monster that took the dead one’s place. 

Her Ward held up admirably, protecting her from the attacks she couldn’t avoid, either because she missed it or because one of her comrades was in the way. It was also pretty helpful when Mark accidentally elbowed her in the kidney while fighting off his own Evergreen Brute. Mia was pretty sure she’d have been knocked on her arse from that had it hit her without the Ward in place. 

She felt people die around her, she heard their grunts and screams of pain, and tried her hardest to ignore them, even when the voices rang with a note of uncomfortable familiarity. She stopped herself from tying names and faces to those sounds, not wanting to distract herself in the middle of a life-and-death battle. 

The monsters fought with no sense of self-preservation, and without the usual malicious animal cunning even the most bestial of their kind tended to exhibit. There was only violent intent in these, an unrelenting striving for violence and bloodshed. They’d struck hard and fast, but without coordination, nor did they exploit the inherent weakness of the defenders’ initial formation. 

But they just kept coming and coming. Mia’s stomach was roiling with a storm of revulsion, and more than once she made mistakes because she had to fight down a sudden bout of nausea from the flood of miasmic presences that filled up her spiritual perception.

The characteristic ding of a new System notification reached her ears, but Mia ignored it with ease, focusing on staying alive and keeping her friends alive. 

“STOP!” The word reverberated through the ambient mana, and Mia felt it spread across it like a ripple. The magical wave swept past the frantically fighting defenders, bypassing them, but slammed into the monsters with the power of a sledgehammer.

They all paused, muscles contracting as they all froze like statues. All of them strained against their invisible bonds, but they held for a second, then two. The Rank 1 monsters broke out of it then, but by then the defenders had slaughtered dozens of frozen monsters, and Mia also felt another group of fighters crashing into the horde from behind. 

Mia threw her Spectral Blade, letting it start spinning and then had it fly forward, tearing through the horde of mindless monsters. That left her without a weapon, but she managed to hold off the monsters that jumped at her, though Camie had to pick up the slack. It didn’t matter; when she yanked her Blade back, there was an open path covered in green corpses connecting the defenders and the reinforcements. 

The monsters would have flowed into the gap in seconds, but neither side allowed it, surging into and through the opening. Camie and Mark rushed into the gap first, and the others followed behind them, with Sebastian and Maven’s teams taking up the rear guard. Brent was back on his feet, though not fighting; instead, he was carrying two wounded, one on each arm. Mia herself stuck close to her girlfriend, lashing out at any of the tougher monsters with her Blade and knocking aside the smaller ones with her Shield. 

Someone fell with a scream, and two people tripped over him. Mia snapped back around, eyes widening as she saw the monsters pounce on them while they were down, too many for the few people close enough to help.

“GROVEL!” Another ripple spread out, and the monsters obeyed the command with undue haste, dropping to the ground and pressing themselves into it as hard as they could.

A howl of rage answered from somewhere in the distance, and Mia recognised the voice of the Werewolf King when he roared, each word coming out of his mouth dripping with hatred and vitriol. “KILL HIM!”

That jolted the grovelling monsters back into action after only a second, but that brief window had been enough for dozens more to die, and for the fallen defenders to scramble back to their feet. Better yet, all the monsters turned tail and ran, ignoring everyone in favour of rushing towards the source of the commanding shouts. Jeff, that had to be Jeff, and the reinforcements they’d been promised … and the Werewolf King wanted to kill him. 

Spire, principle and strategy all demanded that Mia stop by whatever means necessary. Jeff’s weird Skill was an AoE CC — crowd control — that was already proving to be a game-changer in larger-scale battles; they needed him.

‘Sparkle? Can you help?’ Mia asked, trying to pick out Jeff’s magical signature from the dozens of reinforcements. He had to be one of the handful of Level 10s, and probably one of the more serene-feeling ones … but Mia was not really in the right state to be teasing out the details of magical presences at the moment, so instead she tried to pinpoint which person all the monsters were gravitating towards. 

‘On it! The Dark bastard is far away, so it should be a-OK!’ Sparkle called back, making Mia suppress a sigh of relief. Not a moment later, she felt his presence surge with mana as he built himself an arcane construct to possess. ‘Heh, weaklings! Rip and Tear!’

The defenders reached the reinforcements and collapsed around them, pushing the wounded into the circle formation while those who could still fight stayed to form a perimeter. Jeff was barking orders, standing at the centre of the formation along with the injured, which Mia supposed made sense. That was the most well-defended position; he was a control mage, and a horde of monsters had it out for him specifically. 

“We need to kill their King!” Brent said gruffly, somewhere within earshot. “There are too goddamn many of them, and they will continue multiplying if he escapes.”

“Perhaps,” Jeff replied with that eerie calmness that characterised him. “Perhaps not. Check your notifications. The war is all but won, and our victory condition for this battle here is safely extracting as many of you as possible.”

Mia was a bit too busy trying not to die to do so, but if the hiss of surprise from Brent was anything to go by, then that notification she’d been ignoring was important. 

“So that’s where they went,” Brent said, his voice a mix of annoyance and grudging respect. “We were wondering where Agent Graham was.”

“She was the one to transport Tristan to the Rift,” Jeff said. “Couldn’t destroy it herself, she was over levelled.”

“I see,” Brent said. “Where does that leave us?”

“With an Obelisk in the Castle,” Jeff said. “And General Zeigler is the temporary Lord of the City, as the highest ranking member of the official Faction with the most members in the City.”

“Can he banish the monsters? Or the Werewolf King?” Brent asked. 

“Not as such,” Jeff said. “All I’ve been told is that we only have to deal with the monsters already within the city. The entry of new ones, or the formation of Rifts, is supposed to be inhibited for now.”

Even with only a fraction of her mind paying attention to the words, Mia almost stumbled when it all clicked. Zeigler had sent off someone to destroy the last Rift right under the beastkin’s noses while they were busy trying to murder Mia and her friends. They’d been used as a distraction. Without their input or even having the decency to notify them. A rational part of her understood that it was just overrational security, but it still rubbed her the wrong way. They had been used. That would have stung much more had the plan failed. It didn’t, though, which instantly banished the vast majority of whatever gripes Mia would have had about it. 

Well, this was it then. Retreat to the castle, finally Rank Up with the System Obelisk and then come back for round two and pummel the still Rank 0 Werewolf King into the dirt. It sounded like a good plan, even if it felt anticlimactic when the enemy was so close. They could end it here and now, probably, but it would be costly. Maybe so much so that it’d be a pyrrhic victory-

The burrowers circled back around, four eating through the earth just below the surface and one halfway submerged into it, with the Werewolf King riding on top of it. 

“You are not going anywhere!” the man roared. “You all die here, especially you, you rat bastard!”

His eyes were aimed at Jeff, and his words were so full of vitriol that it took Mia aback. That sounded … personal. Not that she cared. He was saving them the trouble of hunting him down.

‘Sparkle?’ Mia asked, and sensed her Sprite pausing momentarily on his warpath. He’d essentially turned into a magical blender in his feline form, ripping apart whichever monster dared to come within clawing distance of him. ‘I need that silver-edged hatchet.’

‘I’ll drop it on you in a bit, I remember where it is,’ he replied instantly, and Mia saw him tear a path through the monster horde as he made his way over to a random spot, then towards Mia. Before reaching her, though, he leapt high into the air and proceeded to throw the hatchet at her. ‘Time to skedaddle. Big, black and furry is here.’

Mia just managed to stop the falling hatchet from smacking her in the face, interposing her Shield in its path at the last moment. Quickly snatching it up from where it fell, Mia cursed her silly sprite under her breath, throwing her Spectral Blade towards the burrower, which was coming towards her. The moment it broke through the surface, the spinning blade was there, splitting it in half lengthwise like a saw blade. Yanking the spinning Blade to the side, she tore it through nearly a dozen monsters and then right through another massive burrower, cutting off the last two-thirds of its length. 

“STOP!” Jeff’s voice swept out, making all the remaining monsters freeze for a brief moment, but that was it. The man himself coughed, though it sounded wrong, too wet and strained. His hands cradled his throat, a visible grimace running across his face. 

It had the desired effect, though. The burrowers stopped, their momentum coming to an all too sudden stop, which ejected the Brutes clinging to their sides like ticks, along with the Werewolf King riding on top of one. 

The massive Werewolf sailed through the air, but twisted mid-flight as he passed over the line of defenders, landing on his sole remaining foot inside the circle, managing to balance himself on it without trouble. Right by the wounded and exhausted, though he seemed to only have eyes for Jeff. 

“Camie?” Mia spoke up, and her girlfriend was next to her in a blink. Mia didn’t say anything, just passed her the silver-edged hatchet and tilted her head towards the werewolf. She couldn’t speak to the request; those wolf ears weren’t just for show, but Camie understood. 

Sparkle was wreaking havoc nearby, and the burrow Mia had split was acting as a bit of a barrier, diverting the swarm to hit other parts of the circle. Mia could hold her and Camie’s spots by herself. I must, and so I will.

Camilla, to her credit, didn’t raise a fuss for once and just gave a serious nod. Mia turned away, focusing on holding the line. That’s all she needed to do. She didn’t need to be the hero of the day; she just needed to do her best. Her best would have to be enough.

She felt Lina’s magic wrap around Camie, muffling the sounds she was making, and then the vampiress pounced on her target. 

The Werewolf King had Jeff by the throat, though in turn, Brent’s sword was at his throat and drawing blood. 

“I’ll be satisfied if I get to kill you,” the Werewolf King said. “You banished me, threw me out like garbage, and now you’ll die. HEAR THAT? You lot want to banish me from this city? This is your fate, now, tomorrow or a year from now, I’ll have my revenge!”

Mia ignored the madman’s words; she had more important things to focus on. Her Spectral Blade tore through a Juggernaut the size of a minivan while she blasted a smaller creature away with a kinetic shockwave, her Shield lashed out to deflect a blow to the side, then she poured crackling arcane mana right into the face of a Brute. She yanked her Blade back into her hand, sending it ripping through the momentarily disoriented Brute’s torso like a hot knife through butter.

Behind her, the Werewolf King howled in pain for the second time that day, and Mia sensed Camie’s familiar presence all but melding with the Werewolf’s. His scream cut short with a stomach-churning wet crack and tear. A heavy thud followed, accompanied by the by-now familiar sound of arterial blood flooding out of a large body.

Mia dared a glance through Sparkle’s eyes and felt a sense of finality settle over her shoulders. The Werewolf King lay sprawled out across the pavement, head and body separated by a dozen metres and a crimson trail of freshly shed blood. Jeff knelt nearby, gasping for breath, with a hand softly cradling his abused throat.

It’s over. Mia thought, fighting down the treacherous sense of relief that nearly knocked her over. The monsters were still there, and they wouldn’t kill themselves. They still had to fight their way out of this encirclement and then hunt them all down, including the Broodmother. 

Then, of course, Fate decided to take a massive crap all over Mia’s shoddy plans and renewed calm. It came from above, a presence unlike any other. 

Mia’s head snapped up so fast she heard a painful crack from her neck, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She squinted, blinded by the immense magical presence descending from the sky. It was so thick, the blinding mana it emitted bled over from Mia’s spirit sense into her regular vision, obscuring her sight. It was as if the sun itself had flown down to take a close look at the Earth.

A shiver of dread ran down her spine as mana snapped and flowed around the being, then lashed out. That was magic activating, more potent magic than anything she’d ever felt. Rank 2, or maybe even 3? It felt familiar; the mana resonated with her on a deep, fundamental level. It had to be Arcane, though she couldn’t dismiss the idea that the familiarity ran deeper than that. It had to.

The magic separated, sweeping out above the battlefield, and then it fell, morphing into a massive arcane construct. It was shaped like a ring, or a doughnut, rather, with an empty circle in the middle and a wide disc around it spreading for more than a hundred metres.

It crashed down on the ground like the hand of God, shaking the earth and knocking Mia off her balance. The sound of hundreds of monsters getting squished into paste rang in her ears, sending another shiver down her spine. 

Mia’s vision started adjusting, and the horribly powerful being slowly became a vaguely humanoid figure with wings, and then the details came into focus as he floated down to hover five metres above the gathered fighters.

He had angelic wings covered in pure white feathers, reminding Mia of her mom’s wings, and he had a mop of wild pink hair just like her own. Finally, her eyes met his pale blue ones, and saw them widen. He glanced down at the strange magical weave in his palm, back at her and then ... he grinned? What? 

She knew that stupid grin.

“Long time no see, sis.” That voice was so achingly familiar, and the treacherous hope that it filled her with felt like twisting the dagger in her heart. “I love what you did with your hair.”

Her voice came out small and fragile, each syllable quivering on her tongue with disbelief and barely suppressed hope. “ … Gabriel?"