Chapter 693: Champion of the Night Lord
Mason fought the urge to just attack what was in front of him. To re-engage his rational, more ‘human’ mind instead of the beast that wanted to hunt, to kill, and teach these lesser things who challenged him the cost.
Nassau could handle two planar lords. They had tremendous innate defences and powerful players standing by. Even if the east could stop a divine champion, the losses would almost certainly be bad. Far better to have Mason figure out how to kill it without people dying in the process.
He growled in frustration and turned, leaping away from the confused elementals. He commanded his equally confused and frustrated bonded animals to fight their way back to the wall and protect themselves, to obey his human allies and keep defending.
A few hard flaps of his wings and he was over the Nexus, dropping his weight to plummet down next to Carl with a metallic clang as he struck. Carl spasmed and clutched his chest.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Why.”
“Red alert in the east. I’ll use the beacon. The two lords out there are elemental. You can dig around inside them and break their heart gems, or you can just blast the shit out of them with magic and they’ll eventually die. Get the thing ready to teleport me.”
He hunched into the glass box without waiting for a response, Shapeshift making him at least eight or nine feet tall. Carl sobered when he saw the alert, moving to the controls. Demi came running (OK pregnant waddling) over. She stepped through the teleporter beacon door, right beside him without a word. He inhaled and knew there was nothing he could say, though he gave it a quick shot anyway.
“They might want you to deal with flyers.”
“I go where you go. And they’ve been sitting on their asses for hours, they’ll be fine.”
He was in way too much of a hurry to argue. And her magic, plus the title, might be very helpful. He took a breath and prepared for the world to vanish, a little spike of nerves rippling down his spine.
It was kind of funny that it bothered him after the amount of times he’d Feywalked. Maybe it was the lack of control. Or the arcane affinity. But it was more like getting on an airplane instead of a really fast road trip in a reliable car. It felt alien and unnatural. A weird thing to think when you were a nine foot tall winged, wolf-bear man, but there it was. He took Demi’s little hand gently in his before the magic warped him.
The moment he re-materialized, One with Nature started screaming. All the sensory power he’d had in the great forest ended like it had been cut off. He picked up Demi, stepped out of the beacon, and jumped into a roiling sky.
Darkness moved in inky tendrils from a black, octopus sun. The clouds oozed and slithered, blotting out the afternoon light. Mason knew instantly what the champion was.
He smelled the abyss on the air. Recognized the stink of lingering death—of old and terrible things that lasted too long, and sunk too deep into the filth of the universe, or maybe themselves, and hated existence itself.
He winced when he realized Demi was shrieking in terror and burying her face in his shoulder. He supposed being launched like a rocket was pretty scary when you weren’t him.
“Sorry. I’ll find somewhere to put you on the wall.”
The ‘somewhere’ was not obvious. As Mason soared above the holy city, he saw an endless army of shambling creatures sieging the walls. Creatures with no formation or tactics simply mobbed up around the long lines, scenes of desperate defense playing out in a hundred places. Helping literally anywhere seemed like a useful thing. But two things stood out.
The first was Blake’s legion of constructs. They covered one side of the city in two more lines of orderly death—the first being shielded soldiers on the ground, the second a row of shooters on the wall. There was a literal mound of dead in front of them so large it had formed a kind of second barrier. Mason decided his brother was doing fine.
The second was a huge block of players that looked like they’d sallied out beyond the wall. Were they pushing out, or trying to get back in? Mason decided either way that’s where they needed him.
He dove down to the theme song of Demi’s screams. The excitement of facing this champion was rising in his chest, and he could practically hear Stag whining somewhere across the world. He could summon him, but the power only worked once an hour or so. He was leaning towards doing it, but not yet. He pulled up and made sure Demi had a soft landing on the nearby rampart, giving her a wink before he flew off as she stood there panting and staring.
“This is the apocalypse!” She yelled as he flew. “Stop being happy about it!”
They both knew that wasn’t happening. A man couldn’t help being what he was.
And while Mason knew this was maybe the destruction of mankind and everything he loved, he wasn’t in control of that. All he could do was fight to the bitter end. To find this champion and the next one and every other ‘rival’ the world gave him, and break them apart.
He scanned the field for his enemy, knowing it would hide like a rat in some pool of darkness, and dove to defend his allies.
**
Chinua was trapped between a wall of his enemies, and a wall of his own men. They were surrounded from every side, their infantry square lodged in the enemy army. And their limited training was showing its ugly colors.
They had to push. To press through on the west side towards the city, taking step after coordinated step. But his men were frightened and losing cohesion in the press of bodies, in the chaos and endless assault. They hadn’t broken, but their natural response was to hold their ground and keep their formation. This was far better than losing it. But they’d stopped moving. And they wouldn’t last forever outside the wall.
Chinua had no time left for strategy or changes. He Shattered to open a pocket and threw another Lighting Spear, blasting enough skeletons down to at least try and see his profile. He’d messaged for help, but was Nassau able? Were they as hard pressed as this?
A single line of text from Carl pulled him back from despair.
Hold tight. Mason inc.
The clouds broke the same moment. Chinua watched his patron streak from the sky in a literal beam of light. He stared like any common soldier as it lanced towards the enemy, then struck like a bomb.
Heat and force rippled across the human forces as it exploded outwards. The enemy army finally paused as if to assess this new threat, backing away long enough to give Chinua’s forces a second to breathe. He didn’t waste it. He grabbed the nearest soldiers and pulled himself up to be seen and hopefully heard.
“Push to the walls! Tank group! Push now! All of you move!”
He saw Becky and John lead the way, glowing with power as they ran ahead. The others followed, the square starting to empty back into an arrow as it rushed behind them. He took a second to thank whichever gods of men were still watching.
“Orders, Captain?”
Adela raised her chakrams beside him. She was soaked in demonic blood, her circular blades like weapons of mass destruction in the massed formations. She’d been with him long enough now to know they weren’t running for cover themselves.
“We guard the civilian and weaker player retreat. Then we fight to Mason with our primary teams. He may need help.”
She glanced at their patron with a slight eyebrow raise, and gave Chinua the face that meant she thought he was crazy, but aware she was still going to follow him. Then she was screaming at the two teams of nearby players to spread out and hold the line.
He watched the chaotic but effective retreat and took a breath, waiting for the enemy to come again. They were going to make it. At least for another wave of this madness. And with Mason here now, maybe they’d push the enemy back and start gaining momentum. They could hold. They had to.
The air shimmered as a cloud blocked the sun. Chinua felt a chill down his spine, raising his shield instinctively as he clutched his spear. Something whispered in his mind.
No, ‘general’. You will fall. Witness the fate of your kind.
[Event initiated. Revenge of the Abyss. Defeat Ravasai, Champion of the Night Lord, with as few casualties as possible. Bonus opportunity for personal contribution points. Good luck!]
Nothing became something. Chinua blinked as a patch of darkness formed claws and charged straight towards him. He jabbed with his spear, but the thing vanished like Carl and rushed straight past him with a gust of wind.
He shouted a warning, but made no sound. His throat hurt from the effort but he heard nothing. The world had gone quiet. He couldn’t hear the fighting, or the retreat, or the sound of his own breathing. He hadn’t made so much as a whisper in the sudden void.
The floating black claws grew a long, reptilian body as it ran, then leapt at his people before it even completely formed.
Adela somehow noticed it and tumbled away with inhuman reflexes, tossing a blade way off target. Julio’s defensive water power flared as the claws seemed to test him, then move on. Mathias the archer was the next closest.
Chinua screamed uselessly again as his friend’s head turned into a red cloud. Mathias’ body fell as the black claws flew by without slowing, straight towards the running crowd of humans and players.
Chinua dropped his defensive powers for speed, and ran after them, still shouting uselessly. He opened his profile and messaged, horror setting in as he watched the words jumble, even the text being sucked away into some dark power.
He ran, mind shutting down as animal panic overcame him, knowing it was probably magically induced but still unable to fight it. An image flashed before his eyes—a thing he hadn’t seen even in dreams for years. His childhood village burned.
He was a boy again, running for water, knowing in his heart it was too little too late. He could even smell it. The thatch, the human flesh. He ran to save his people, and he had never felt so slow.