Chương 33: Flight Path

Lisa watched as the town of Halice was swept away below her. She directed winds to rip through the town, tearing shutters off windows and shingles off roofs. Bolts of lightning came down on her commands, stabbing at any vehicle still moving on the streets below. A small group of Scales clung to rubble, remnants of a house after the winds had collapsed its wall. All they could do, as the three conjured tornados weaved their path through the remnants of the town.

She focused on them, ordering the sky to open and unleash wrath. Lightning blasted down, four bolts summoned from the sky. Four tiny screams carried by the winds to her ears as her targets died, notifications popping up in her UI. She directed a tornado to finish the group off, individual members getting ripped from the rubble as it neared. The rest soon followed as a tornado swallowed the remnant of the house, carrying wood, brick, and bodies into the swiftly filling cyclone.

A boulder the size of a car flew up from the ground. Lisa's eyes widened as she quickly called on the winds. They carried her to the side with a sudden jerk, still too slow to fully avoid it. Her shield flared as the rock clipped its side before vanishing. Mana drained out of it quickly as the boulder bounced off of it. It broke apart as it flew back down, pieces of rubble and metal that had been compacted together falling apart.

The first bit of return fire Lisa had gotten after frying the crew of every AA gun in the town. A Scale mage had decided to surface. Lisa grinned. Wrong move, she thought while grasping at the storm above her. Without the element of surprise, an earth mage vs a storm mage, with their level difference, in the middle of this torrent? There couldn't even be a chance of her losing. Lisa's shield was gone pretty much, the protective charm worn out, but it didn't matter.

The unlucky Scale mage didn't even have a chance to move as a dozen bolts converged on that fancy, oh-so-easy-to-hit metal helmet. Lisa wasn't sure if she could hear shrieking over the wind, but she'd like to imagine that's what she was hearing as the Scale convulsed. After half a second, the fried corpse collapsed to the ground. To hell with it, she drew on her mana reserves, feeding the spell as much as possible. If nothing above the ground in the town could survive, nothing could try and hit her.

Hell, nothing could aim at her with the sheer amount of fog and wind in between her and the town below. More chunks of rock and earth flew up, but she was prepared now, darting about, letting the winds carry her as fog blanketed the ground below. Rain poured down in thick and heavy sheets while lightning bolts zig-zagged across the sky. A fourth tornado, a fifth, a sixth, more forming as she put more mana into the spell.

She didn't want any Scale capable of coming up from underground without immediately being seized by the storm's fury. Her fury.

Captain Jairvin cursed himself as an idiot as he pulled at the grips of the AA gun he'd ordered carried through the tunnels. Others helped, straining as they dragged it through the mud. This blasted dirt had been dry only an hour ago. Damn Stormsummoner. Above them, the storm continued to go, only lightly this far out from the town. Rain fell, splattering about and turning the ground to muck, but it was nothing compared to the torrent falling on the town itself.

Jairvin couldn't even see the town, only the fog banks and sheets of rain that covered it. There was a brief stretch of clear sky above that, then the storm clouds above from which lightning came down. So many bolts his eyes hurt looking at it, a sheet of white and blue as bolt after bolt struck the town. Up above, the Stormsummoner floated, directing it all.

Even out here on the outskirts, the winds from the storm were enough to send dust fluttering around them and loud enough that to communicate, you needed to scream. Still, it was better than in the town itself. Jairvin had been there when it'd started. He'd seen Baskal get hit, lightning reaching down from the sky and connecting, tethering him for nearly half a minute as it pumped electricity into him. He couldn't have helped, stuck hanging onto a pile of rubble until the tunnel below opened back up.

It had meant watching helplessly as the skin had charred, eyes had broiled, and blood vessels had burst. It had continued until all that was left was a motionless statue of charred flesh and bone, still tethered to the sky. Jairvin had made it underground shortly after and begun organizing this. He'd gathered whoever was left of his original anti-air unit. Only a few of them were still alive. The Stormsummoner had known who to target first.

The mages wouldn't be able to stop the Stormsummoner, not with their entire supply of Bursan anti-mana chemicals already used up. It was up to the small ad-hoc team he'd assembled and had dragged the gun through the tunnel, past huddling soldiers. Those tunnels were supposed to stand up to all the Storm summoner would whip up. From the rumbling and loose dirt that had fallen on them throughout their journey, she doubted it. This needed to end before the entire underground collapsed.

"This is stupid. You're going to get us killed, Captain," Haskell screamed as he tried to adjust the makeshift scope to the gun. It was not the easiest thing to attach to the gun as it was dragged through a tunnel. The fact it was a rifle scope wasn't helping either.

"Just make sure it's zeroed for three kilometers. Kelacht can handle the rest from there, can't you, Corporal?"

"Yes?" The corporal answered hesitantly. He knew as well as Jairvin that what they were utilizing was finicky at the best of times. It relied on how the System hadn't fully caught up with the times yet.

"The blasted thing isn't built for three kilometers," Haskell rasped.

"Improvise it, Corporal," Jairvin snapped.

"Dying here can't be any worse for you than surviving." Too far. The look Haskell had flashed had been one of sheer hatred. The engineer was testy at the best of times. The current situation was not the best of times, and Haskell had choked on enough poison gas to damage his lungs permanently at Trost. The damage to his lungs was deep-seated. A cleric could heal it. If one could have gotten to him after all the other wounded clogging the hospitals back home before he died, it was another question.

If Haskell was upset, he kept quiet for now, focusing on the scope instead. Jairvin briefly contemplated apologizing before another lightning bolt took him away from his thoughts as it crackled across the sky. Later. If any of them survived this. Kelacht hesitantly laid a hand on the AA gun, then, after a second, nodded.

"Haskell, Morrit, please help Kelacht aim the gun. Follow his directions as best you can." The system had taken its time adjusting to the invention of firearms and their various advances. Its evolution was a pain to keep track of and essentially made your skills worthless depending on how randomly it decided to patch itself. But today, that would be their advantage in one way. The same skills that affected rifles and other precision firearms? Direct fire larger caliber guns were affected by the same skills.

The AA gun was about the limits of it, a larger 75-millimeter piece used for firing at large bombers. Not for human-sized targets, but hopefully, the System wouldn't treat it differently than a sniper rifle. Kelacht directed the movement of the gun, tracking the Stormsummoner through the sky. She'd slowed down once the Battle Group's mages had engaged. She was probably saving Mana for spells. Kelacht was muttering under his breath, likely activating talents.

It was a routine for some who had more difficulty with the system than most. Jairvin had been lucky to grab him, though. The chain of command was quite fluid when most of the unit was dead. Kelacht was one of the few snipers in the company with enough talents to act as his own spotter. They didn't have the flags for windage anyway.

"She's adjusting the storm too frequently," Kelacht said in exasperation.

"I've got windage varying from nothing to sixty miles an hour within seconds. It's going to be a rough shot."

"Don't have time. Try to land the first shot as best you can. We are unlikely to have time for another." The Stormsummoner wasn't moving. Low on mana? If they'd been ordered to conserve mana-regenerating consumables, then the Stormsummoner could still be low from the battle at Trost. They didn't have great domestic productions of those kinds of potions in Aetheria, much like they didn't have great domestic production of many different things.

Either way, the point was the Stormsummoner was giving the easiest target to them that she could. Easiest still being human-sized at three kilometers in the sky. At least the shell would have a relatively flat trajectory. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. It had to be a solid shell as well. The skills stopped working if enough explosive primer was put in.

The system had an awkward enough definition of a 'bullet' that putting too much in would cause it to become a 'shell' instead. Not that the amount of explosives would matter in the end. The explosive primer didn't matter when putting a seventy-five-millimeter shell through someone's body. Jairvin was blathering inside his head, but he had to at this point. Just to focus on anything else except the storm that now occupied the Town. And what they were about to do. It was out of his hands right now as well.

One of the tornados between them and the Stormsummoner passed, leaving nothing to get in their way. Lightning came down in sheets, rows of bolts ripping through the town as they tore it apart. The rain lashed harder, but not enough to affect visibility. The Stormsummoner had to see as well to target her typhoon. That was their one bit of luck in this. Kelacht considered the barrel and muttered a few commands to the other two. It shifted slightly to the right.

Kelacht looked uncertainly up towards the target, then looked at Jairvin. He nodded firmly. Despite his own doubts, there was no need to give the corporal any. It was now or never. His expression turned resolute, the Corporal turned back to the gun and, after a half-second, pulled the trigger. The barrel jerked back, the entire gun shaking. Jairvin immediately pressed his binoculars against his eyes. He was an Artillery Officer. The career came with some perks, talents most other careers could never get.

One saw the shell's path once it had left the barrel. The wind was jostling the shell ever so slightly. Whipping at it, making the trajectory wiggle. His mouth was dry for the two seconds it took the shell to travel as the line kept passing through and then moving to the side of the Traveler.

Lisa was beginning to understand what some of the older mage Travelers meant by getting to the arcane high. Below her, buildings were flying, roofs ripping off, and the walls following up into the sky, joining the tornados. She had six going, filling rapidly with debris, corpses, and anything else they picked up. She'd stopped getting notifications from kills long after the screams of those stuck inside had stopped, but she kept them going.

It would only benefit her to suck up any Scale who stuck their head above ground. The same went for any rocks they tried to send her way. Arcane power surged through her, permeating every molecule of her body. In the middle of the storm, her primal elements, she was leaking arcane energy like a sieve, but it only fed the storm more, which in turn fed her. It was an unstable feedback loop, where the energy would eventually die off, but it felt so good for now. Still, it's best to end it early.

It felt like a bad crash to reality, turning off the spigot, but going completely dry on mana would be a bad idea even if Lisa had killed every Scale. She stopped feeding the storm, although the shrill whistle of the wind continued. Okay, two more minutes, then it was time to clear this off so Lewis to head underground. Or they could wait a day for him to heal up Trevor and Rebecca. Yeah, that would be- Pain. That's all her world was. Pain and the sensation of falling.

The wind whipped by her, the ground coming closer. Why weren't her spells working? She tried to move an arm but felt nothing. She tried to move the other and spots appeared in her eyes. She screamed as pain painted her arm. Something tore, a horrible ripping sound audible over the storm. I have to cast, got to cast.. where am I? Still falling, still spinning, the ground below coming ever closer. Spinning brought her torso into view. It was gone. Just…

gone, half one side missing, entrails trailing into the air as she spun. Your torso has taken catastrophic damage from a 75mm dual-pupose shell. This has bypassed the damage threshold for this body part and partially destroyed it. Lisa was aware of it. Vaguely. It felt like a dream. She tried to touch it, only for the pain to bring some clarity. Fuck. They'd… they'd blown half of her away. She couldn't feel her other arm because it was gone. Your Stunned Condition will gain another stack in four seconds.

No, no, she couldn't afford another level of the condition, driving her consciousness back into surreality. Her brain dove into a slow, sticky feeling, the rest of her body not far behind it. The urgency she had just felt was so distant now. Where, where was she? The sky? She could feel the wind. It'd taken so long to get used to when she first learned to fly. She was vaguely aware of someone grabbing her, the coldness fleeing as a warm hand touched her back. Comfort radiated from it. Awareness snapped back to her.

So did pain. She screamed, trying to strike at whatever was causing it.

"Calm down, Lisa, stop, you're going to hurt yourself even worse!" Lewis snapped as the warm feeling on her back increased. She tried to form any kind of answer, only for all that came out to be a sputtering cough of blood all over Lewis' pants.

"Stop flailing. Just be still. I'm sealing you up. I know it hurts. Just hold it together just a little longer." The warmth suffused throughout her body, her insides itching as the magic got to work on them. The pain was still there, and her mouth still tasted of copper, but it was fading. Enough that she could speak.

"How…how bad?" She choked out, sputtering more blood.

"Bad. But you'll live. I've got you stabilized, but I can't heal the hole. But you're good. We just need to get you down. I'm numbing the pain. Is it working?" She took a breath and marveled at how wonderful it was, just a normal breath without pain.

"It is. Thank -" Suddenly, the world burst into bright white light as Lewis' shield exploded into existence around them.

Jairvin's hands gripped his binoculars tight enough he could feel them cutting into the skin. Miss. Damnation. How had the Healer found the Stormsumoner so fast? Had he been waiting in the chaos of the storms untouched this entire time? How could he fucking fly?

"Load the next round. Kelacht hit the damn target! One meter to the left, down half a meter!"

"Sights are not adjusted for this range or this drop!" Kelacht protested even as the rest of the crew ejected the shell.

"We need to adjust it!"

"Not enough time. She'll be active soon!" Jairvin wasn't sure of that, but they couldn't risk it. Every second of giving them some breathing room was another second of them getting closer to annihilating his group. They needed to keep them busy until whatever was left of the Task Group came from underground.

"Shell loaded!" Three seconds. It had felt like an eternity. Credit where it was due Kelacht immediately went back to the sight, adjusting to Jairvin's instruction. The gun jerked back as the second shell shot out. Vrast mapped the shell's trajectory. Bulls-eye. Bagging one Traveler had been a miracle. Two?

They would be due medals, and maybe he could lean on high command to spare the resources on treating Hask- His heart sank as the shell hit the shield's edge and, in a flash of white light, became liquid, falling through the air. He opened his mouth, the order to scatter halfway out. The entire world went white.

Lewis glared at the Scales off in the distance. The remnants of the artillery shell fell off the hard light of his shield. Now he could see them clearly, and his instinctive summoned sun had been right on target. Most crew members were on the ground, clawing at their empty eye sockets. This sun had been more potent than the ones at the edge of town. Lewis didn't care that it was a waste of mana to liquefy their eyes instead of blinding them. He was about to waste a lot more. Lisa had stopped screaming.

She had passed out from the pain of having lost her torso. He couldn't heal her beyond stabilization until tomorrow. He couldn't move her while under fire, either, not with Lisa's flight amulet. And whoever else had survived the storm would soon be coming out. And most of all, whoever had done this needed to Burn.

"Iltaiel of the Sun, I call upon your aspect to defend myself and my allies. Let the Sun's splendor be beheld again today and annihilate my foes!" Sun's Fury has been cast. The clouds Lisa had summoned parted as his goddess answered the prayer. The Sun's Fury unleashed itself on the planet as focused light and heat, like a magnifying glass in the hands of a young child. And he knew just the ants to hit it with.

In the forest, Rebecca kept her eyes screwed shut as she could hear the roaring fury of the sun smashing into the earth. Something must have made Lewis desperate to unleash that power. Even looking at it in action could blind someone permanently. Please let them still be alive. The ground shook and heaved as the roaring splendor of a goddess wrath unleashed shrieked through the tunnels. Earthen walls slammed shut, not allowing the searing heat any further beyond the beam of pure fury.

Nearby, Trevor held onto a tree, arms blindly looped around the trunk. He hadn't said a word since he'd gotten back, ignoring her and just feeling around the ground around them. She'd always felt something off about him, but that had been just creepy. There was almost something relieving about seeing him as vulnerable as she was at that moment. The roar of the sun grew in intensity, reaching a crescendo before cutting out, the rumbling of the earth and shaking of trees ending soon after.

The Major quietly sat in the underground command center they'd dug out a week ago, listening numbly to the telephone grasped in his claw. Up above, occasional pieces of earth and rock fell still. The quaking had ended twenty minutes ago. The Travelers in the sky had flown for the edge of the town, and hadn't appeared since. The clean-up continued above and below ground. Whatever the Healer had unleashed, the tunnels hadn't been built to stand. So many dead, choking on earth in their final moments.

Another tally for the butchers. Reports were still coming in, relayed by the few others still here with him.

"Remnants of an AA gun were found at one of the tunnel exits, sir. It looks like Captain Jairvin assembled a group and dragged one out there when the Stormsummoner was trying to finish Lieutenant Mordas. There were no survivors." Luck. They'd had some. At the cost of another group of his soldiers, and Jairvin. He could hope it had been quick. He blankly considered the telephone wires traveling across the walls and down the tunnel wall.

Radio signals refused to work properly between the storm and whatever the Healer had unleashed at the end. That left the telephones they had wired up across the town. The ones above ground didn't function, destroyed by the storm. The underground ones mostly worked. The Major was silent momentarily, then said, "Any signs of the bodies?"

"Nothing but ash. The AT gun was less a gun and more a half-melted puddle of metal, sir. The patrol only stayed long enough to ensure there were no survivors and drag those in the tunnels nearby back to the medical station. Most of them will make it, although the burns are extensive. Twenty-three more for the medics to handle." There weren't many survivors overall. A hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty, capable of bearing arms. The walking wounded. The exhausted. The untested.

The ones he hadn't wanted to risk on this. He wouldn't need to if it all worked out.