Chương 491: AF Chapter 490 – The Air is back for Aerbax

The Virindi flowed out to the flanks, attempting to get to the open part of the box and the targets inside. The Vanguards marched smoothly into a circle, graceful as armored dancers with but one command. The Wolfpacks pulled back inside them and drew dozens of Summons inside with them who were cut off from their fellows instantly, and suddenly mauled from all sides as the Vanguard lines were suddenly a closed circle.

The Archers split their attention, focusing around exactly two Archers: Princess Fan and Queen Mother Elysa. Both women picked separate targets, and half the Archers fired at each one. The virindi moving fastest to get the altitude and flanks inherited a score of arrows each, and collapsed Burning. The two royals smoothly drew, aimed again, waited one breath for all the master Archers with them to set, and shot again. Nineteen arrows followed each shining shot and the spirals of Lost Light winding around them.

Briggs, Kris, and the Mick ripped through the inner numbers of Summons wildly, clearing out the space and removing the threat with apocalyptic violence. Summons bent and broken were flung over the heads of the Vanguards holding their places, chopped apart, dropping, Burning.

"Tremble, and feed the Fire!

"Tremble, and Feed the Flame!

"Quaver as you die forever, and lose that precious Name!

"You clung so hard and desperately, and now you'll lose it all!

"Moan and pray to Shadow, it will not heed your call!

"DEATH! Oblivion! The Great and Final End!

"The Great and Glorious Mystery you could never comprehend!

"Tremble! IT COMES!" I could tell they were shaking by the fluctuations in the Sublime Chord, vestigial emotions of the dark kind falling all too eagerly to become prey to fear, instead of instilling fear. They'd all fallen to Aerbax's temptations because they wanted to retain their individuality, and to the Shades because they wanted to experience emotions without losing control the way the rynthids did.

The fact that they'd been able to control the rynthids the way they had in the Dires showed they'd managed some level of emotional development… but now, that made them vulnerable. We were sitting there and taking their best, and they couldn't get past to us with their vaunted magic, even the powerful Void Magic sourced from the Shadow in the Void, either bargained for or simply imitated after study, it was hard to tell. They'd taken in new energies and powers, raised their limits, become more…

and now they were feeling all the various shades and colors of dismay and fear and dread and worry and anxiety coming over them as we hewed into their servants, and then targeted them. Their retreat was swift, a single wavering that became a logical route with remarkable speed as telepathic accord was reached. The surviving Summons raced to get in our way so we could not pursue easily, but the virindi still lost four more before they were out of accurate range of the Archers.

Briggs' order shifted targets, and the floating marionettes, undead corpses animated with combined energies of the virindi and shadow, were focused down next. The animated puppets levitated high enough to see over the Shields, but thankfully were not intelligent enough to exploit that. It also meant the Wolfpacks could flood out the back, sweep around, and drive the Summons up against the wall of those Shields, the thrusting Spears or hacking Axes driving between them with opportunity.

The carnage was fast, furious, and over quickly. The virindi retreated too swiftly to think about pausing and sniping, even as their Summons were fed to vivus.

"Breathe and march!" Briggs ordered, pointing with Endure. The Vanguards peeled out quickly into a staggered line and began to trot forwards, because the Spawn Points were lighting up with incoming creatures, and we didn't want to have to fight these things over and over. There were more Summons coming from the further points, ordered by the virindi, attempting to slow us down.

Towed along by the Spearmen behind the Vanguards, the Archers softened them up on the approach, the Vanguards formed arcs in front of them, and when the Summons drove into them viciously, the Wolfpacks streamed in behind them and cut them to ribbons with devastating speed. The map of Spawn Points was updating constantly, and I was hitting those points constantly with Darts.

There were a couple long-range sniping attempts, which I thought were pretty funny and just juked aside from, letting the Void Magic Arcs flash past me and miss by inches. They were just distractions.

"Overriding Command! Lava Pool flames rising! Pull back to the wall with all speed!" I ordered in Magevoice. There was no hesitation. If I issued an Override Command, it was to be obeyed instantly, survival was on the line. Every single soldier fighting turned for the wall of the Cauldera there and booked it at speed, abandoning any fights and leaving startled Summons there paused in surprise at the swiftness of our retreat.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Naturally they soon raced after the lumbering and strangely quick Vanguards, and in doing so discovered that the Archers weren't much affected by the retreat.

The Disk-riders were happy to pick the Summons off over the two hundred yard run to the edge of the Cauldera, while behind them great deep crimson plumes smoking with shadow blew out of the lava pool and began to expand over the base of the crater floor like an all-consuming pyroclasm… except they didn't really extend into the air very far.

Up the slope as far as possible, Vanguard Shields slammed down, and I actually came down right on Kopf's shoulders to set up the Control Winds from Zeks into the face of the incoming wall of flames, shadows, and heavy poisonous gasses. A tornado of icy winds from very high in the sky came down to exchange places with superhot air, instantly setting up a massive vortex effect as it spun there.

The pyroclasm racing for us was sucked skywards, and as it did so, the sparkling vivus in the magic ignited it in a wild torus going in both directions. Great cold winds blew down and away from us, sending the pyroclasm rolling out the two exit canyons to either side of us as shadows and unwhite warred aggressively. Directly in front of us, the main thrust of the Shadowclasm was going up like a Roman Candle, doing no harm to us and really making an aggressive flambe for the benefit of the Land.

All the soldiers there were kneeling, eyes half-closed, focused on breathing, regaining mana, whatever needed to be done for the moment.

"Oi!" Kris, standing on Briggs' shoulders, hefted a ruby the size of her fist in her hand my way, sparkling with something inside that was quite bright. I just nodded. She stuck it on the end of her hair, black strands wrapping it like steel and holding on as she spun her suddenly six-foot raven locks like a sling.

Four circles and the thing looked like a solid ring of fire, it was moving so fast in her grasp, and then she whipped it out and ahead of us with a crack that actually broke the sound barrier with its speed. A lot of impressed eyes were watching it as it arced over and out there towards the center of the island, and only seemed to get brighter the further it traveled, flying between the fountains of shadow-spewing flames there, falling to the center of the lava pool we couldn't see… POOM.

The Vivic Widened Pyroclasm expanded in an eyeblink, rising up and out three hundred yards in an awesome hemisphere of pale unwhite-chased flames as it flattened against the ground and swept out, covering everything. Everything of Shadow ignited, and since that was essential to the spells controlling what was happening here, the Shadowclasm blew apart like a flamethrower going through piles of leaves. The spell didn't do a lot of damage, because it didn't need to do a lot of damage.

It just needed to do it EVERYWHERE.

"UP! AT THEM!" Briggs ordered instantly, before the Shadowclasm's wall had even fallen apart. The howling vortex in front of us spun out and blew in an icy rush ahead of us towards the center of the place. The Vanguard surged to their feet and began pounding forwards in measured paces, every member tracking those beside them with their footsteps alone, Briggs leading the way as Kris jumped free and Waveskated along beside him.

I was hovering just behind Kopf, staring ahead at the center of the Caulcano and all that stone now striped and washed with a whiteness that was eating at and corroding away the blackened rock. The spell only did 2-12 base damage, maybe enough to kill a civilian, but that was fine. The spell was made to cover large areas, not small ones, and it didn't take much for vivus to go off on Taint.

The Summons I hadn't reached the Spawn Points of had reappeared, completely unfazed by the Shadowclasm itself, naturally enough. The Shadowclasm's surge might have been able to clean off the Points I'd Sealed with vivus, but it hadn't had time before the Seals were actually reinforced by all the extra vivus added to the Veil and helping lock this place down even tighter. We were rolling around the Cauldera now, another wave of Summons was gathering up to contest us…

but it was much smaller than the previous one for some odd reason, and the eyes that were regarding it were full of scorn and schadenfreude. If the virindi and their Summons at full strength hadn't been able to stop us before, what left them thinking they could stop us now? If the virindi could have fled, they should have. That would have been absolutely fine, because we'd be absolutely sure to hunt them down. It was what we were here for, killing them all.

We'd bring in some banderlings and tuskers, go over every inch of this ground, find them, and then send them off forever. Obviously they weren't being allowed to flee. That was fine for us, too. The black stone was now washed with strips of misting white, with the path of the storm vortex behind us also glittering with ice in its misting swathe towards the lava pool.

Throwing ice at an Elemental Lord of Fire was definitely a rude thing to do in normal circumstances, but Aerbax was no Elemental, and anyway, it had thought-locked me, and I still hadn't forgiven it for that.

"What are you figuring for a next move?" Briggs asked me over his shoulder, tossing Endure from one hand to another as we closed in, preparing to throw his Hammer to get things started.

"Fountains of fireballs out of that hole there, judging by the magic around it." We were cutting towards the edge of the lava again, meaning we'd actually have the molten stone to our right.

"Don't get within sixty feet of the lava. Pretty sure something is in there." Our course altered instantly, lots of heads turning that way and making sure our position didn't get that close. Kris promptly shifted to the right and waved everyone to the left of herself, making sure no one got within range.

"I'm really starting to like this guy," Briggs murmured thoughtfully.

"I only see twenty or so Fire Elementals. Archers, stay focused on first the rifts, then the marionettes, then the virindi. I'll handle the Fire Elementals." Endure sparkled as powerful Gemstones shifted position, and the head of the Greathammer swirled into a thing of incarnate ice and frost which those Elementals really weren't going to like when he gave it a toss like a cannon shot going off.

And, having precious little better to do, I eyed those Fire Elementals, who were Tainted with Shadow even upon being Summoned in, and shook my head. As they came into Briggs' throwing range, I sent off my Mass Imperil V on all the Fire Elementals, even as the Support Casters did much the same on the rifts, swirling neo-elementals of aetheric portalspace energies controlled by slivers of the virindi hivemind, grinning puppet-masks and all.