Rune Seeker

Color fled the area as Hiral’s Annihilation of Amin Thett turned everything monochrome. Spectral faces below him paled as they realized their doom had arrived. Fingers slipped off arrows, the energy constructs fading into nothing even as they began to fall. Commanders opened their mouths as if to give orders, but no words came out. Even the cannons on top of the tower silenced in anticipation of what was to come.

No need to keep them waiting.

A sound like fabric tearing shattered the brief silence, echoing off the walls, as the growing ball of volatile energy erupted into a cylindrical beam wider than Hiral was tall. Black and white mixed like paint getting stirred together, air and reality itself tore at the passing.

But, if the beam was bad, the actual strike was worse.

Hitting the top of the wall, Spectres simply vanished – like sugar in water – before a dome of energy exploded outward from the impact point.

Ten feet. Twenty. Forty. Eighty. Two-hundred feet, the destruction spread, swallowing everything as it grew. White bubbles seemed to boil within the expanding black. Titanic cracks reverberated across the hilltop, the dome reaching the tower and clawing its way up the walls.

Collected energy spent, the beam finally ceased, the explosive dome of destruction following it a few seconds later. Left in its wake, scars marred the air, the whole space shivering like it was on the verge of breaking down. The Spectres manning the wall were gone, not a trace of them left.

The wall, however, stood nearly as tall and proud and before. Only where the beam had directly struck, was there much sign of destruction, with a circular gouge fifteen-feet wide torn out of it. The tower, as well, stood nearly unblemished.

Like the notification had said, the walls were strong.

And, though he’d slaughtered every single soldier that had been visible, more of them streamed out of doorways along the wall and the base of the tower. Above, the hard-light spears resumed their barrage, though none came his way because of their angle of fire.

Sure, he could go up there and do something about them, but Seena had asked him to take care of the archers, and with more of them coming out, that was exactly what he was going to do. Claws of Separation instantly formed on the ends of his fingers, energy crackling off them like small bolts of lightning, and Hiral launched himself at the top of the wall.

Rejection and Impact joined his ‘landing’, ballooning out with Expansion and Energy to shred the closest Spectres. A bend of his knees to absorb some of his momentum, then he kicked back off to the side, claws slashing.

Two Spectres fell to the first swipe, their bodies eroding as the Breakingadded into his claws ravaged them outward from the wounds. Low under an arrow trying to skewer him – slashing through a pair of legs as he went – a twist to avoid a second arrow aimed at his face – an uppercut slash extending his claws to rip apart a line of targets – and Hiral reached the pair drawing their bows back for a second shot. Reached and dashed past, his hands lifting up as he went to catch the face of each of the Spectres as he went by.

Somehow expecting his hands to pass through their insubstantial bodies – or, frankly just too slow to dodge – the archers didn’t even attempt to avoid him. Runic energy gathering in his palms made sure they weren’t so lucky, and suddenly they were ripped from their feet as Hiral hurtled forward.

Lines of glowing energy appeared along the Spectres’ bodies by Hiral’s next step, unhealthy doses of Breaking, Expansion, Energy, Impact, and Unsealing streaming into them. By the third step, Hiral’s feet skidded along the stone surface of the wall, and he twisted at the waist, hurling the Spectre in his right hand straight ahead. Even as it flew at a group of six more Spectres rushing at him, he twisted hard the other way, throwing the second Spectre over the side of the wall into the courtyard below.

Then, he dashed right back the way he’d come, hands at his sides, and claws shimmering with deadly intent.

Twinned explosions rocked the area behind him, columns of force twenty-feet wide climbing into the air in his sensory domain.

Bodies made entirely of energy are a very bad match up. For them.

Already with two stacks of Ever-Evolving+, Hiral tore into the line of Spectre’s trying to stop him. To their undead eyes, he couldn’t have been more than a blur, like a razor-wind flitting between them as if they were standing still. And, to him, they might as well have been. Acting as little more than statues frozen in different poses, Hiral whipped down the length of the wall, claws slashing with pinpoint accuracy as he went. For those just out of reach, well, they didn’t make out any better, thanks to the eight spectral arms sprouting from Hiral’s back. Each equipped with their own terrifying claws of Separation, the Hundred Handed+ lashed out in a constant flurry.

In the time it would’ve taken for one of the Spectre’s to blink, Hiral had reached the far end of the parapet. Then, behind him, bodies fell like a line of puppets getting their strings cut. To his side, another door opened, and his sensory domain sped down it.

Dozens more Spectres ran up the stairs to support their fallen comrades.

They’re almost endless…

Hardly doing more than glancing at where the enemies would come from, Hiral fed power into his Runes of Connection and Gravity, filling the entire stairwell with connected points. A snap of his fingers, and a dozen gravity bombs erupted within the bowels of the wall. While not quite as effective as his claws, the bombs more than did their job. Maiming and outright destroying every Spectre hoping to exit through that doorway.

But, if there was one…

All down the length of the wall, those same doorways as before slammed open, scores of troops rushing to get out. Even with how fast he was taking them down, if the numbers kept coming like this…

If they kept coming…

Hiral would have a lot of test subjects.

Which was perfect, considering there was something else he’d been looking for an opportunity to attempt. And, with all the Spectres he’d just killed, now was the perfect time. First though…

Solar energy spiked in Hiral’s body before dozens of his clones burst out of him in all directions. Moving far faster than the Spectres climbing the stairs, these solar-energy clones reached the tops of the stairwells long before the undead did. In those fractions of a second they were moving, Hiral hadn’t been idle, either, channeling the kill-energy he’d gotten into a second Annihilation of Amin Thett. With how spread out the doorways were on the length of wall surrounding the tower, it wasn’t like he could hit all of them with one shot.

Not unless it was somehow in front of all the doorways at the same time.

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Or, more accurately, nearly the same time.

Twenty-three Hiral’s stood in front of induvial doors as he spooled energy into the Rune of Exchange on his palms, while color fled his section of wall. In the next second, Hiral released his blast at the same time he rapidly – and repeatedly – activated his rune. All across the wall, everything went monochrome before the all-consuming Annihilations of Amin Thett flooded down the separate stairways.

To Hiral’s sensory domain, Spectres died in droves, the energy of his attack filling every inch of the enclosed space all the way down to the base of the wall. There – and on the floors in between – the rampant energies exploded out to fill nearby rooms, erasing all unlife to be found.

In seconds, it was over, and Hiral let out a breath as his body reacted to the absolute deluge of solar power he’d had to put out to make that work, and the spike he’d gotten in return for Allied Killing Spree+. Sure, he was back up to full, but emptying his well and then filling it back out so suddenly brought an odd discomfort, and it took him a few seconds to adjust.

Luckily, nothing attacked him in that time. Actually, according to the sensory domain stretching down into the depths of the wall, there wasn’t anything left to attack him.

Spears of hard light still fired from the roof of the tower, though even those stopped a few seconds later, as the sounds of feet landing on the wall nearby reached his ears.

“Good of you to join me,” Hiral said, turning to find his party there with him.

“Looks like you had some fun without us,” Yanily said.

Hiral couldn’t even lie about it. “I kind of did, yeah.”

The spearman just walked over and offered a fist-bump, which Hiral happily met. “Just leave some for us to play with next time,” Yan said.

“No promises.”

“I’m sure there are plenty more in there,” Seeyela said, one dagger pointed at the tower. “Unless you killed them to?”

“Nah, the Boss only told me to deal with the archers,” Hiral said. “How are the other two parties doing?”

“Regretting saying they wanted to race,” Seena said with a confident laugh. Then she turned a little more serious. “They’re fine. Look for yourself.”

And, Hiral did, eyes widening at Nivian’s towering Aspect swinging its warmaul through the swarm of flying attackers. With each sweep of his weapon, entire swaths of the constructs vanished. What’s more, there were dozens of chains hanging off the hammer’s head, catching and destroying even more of the things.

The counterattacks – hundreds of small beams – weren’t even pinpricks to Nivian’s huge, armored form. He simply wailed his hammer around with abandon, decimating the swarm. From the ground near his feet, Wule’s three lanterns blasted out wide cones of energy that swallowed sections whole, leaving nothing behind.

With every swing of Bash’s new hammer – the Fist of the First – spikes of stone shot from the earth. Sure, the little Troblin probably missed more constructs than he hit, but Hiral’s high Atn easily picked out the hoots and hollers of fun from the fight.

Finotol – from the looks of things – had found a way to make the stones from her slingshot explode in larger areas, erasing groups of constructs within ten feet of the initial blast. Even her companion, Rive, looked to be releasing some kind of sonic, roar attack. The range and damage weren’t anything amazing, but the big cat was most certainly trying. Or, maybe it was just supremely annoyed the birds tended to fly just outside the range of its leaping, swiping claws.

Igwanda, well, her arrows possessed incredible, piercing power, punching through lines of the birds with ease. It certainly wasn’t the most efficient, usually taking down around five of the birds, but then Hiral’s eyes narrowed at the next shot. Instead of half-a-dozen birds with the arrow, a wave of rupturing birds followed in the wake of the arrow.

Whatever Igwanda had figured out – spontaneous ability evolution? – had created some kind of tail of destruction left behind her arrows. Nice.

From the pace the party was moving, it would catch up to Hiral’s group within a few minutes at most.

Ilrolik’s group couldn’t be said to be having quite the same success. While the had found a way to deal with the constant barrage of traps – combining several abilities to turtle up and slowly move forward – it was not going to win them this race. In a lot of ways, they had the trickiest obstacles – the traps – to deal with out of everybody, considering their builds.

Loan or Ilrolik probably could’ve used one of their cooldowns – like Juggernaut – to barrel themselves through the traps, but that would’ve left the rest of them exposed to what came next. Yully, Devison, Sera, and Drahn definitely didn’t have the durability to take too many of those traps. And, Hiral could even hear Yully scolding Devison for stepping on something, because of course he would.

Really, they needed something like Seena’s movement ability – the one that turned her and nearby allies into a phoenix to rush forward – to get past sections of the traps. Or, maybe some kind of skills to temporarily disable them.

Thinking about it, Gauto or his raid group might have something exactly along those lines. Splitting them up to join other raid groups suddenly made a lot of sense. That’s Gauto, though, seeing a problem before anybody else even realizes one exists.

“So,” Romin said, pulling Hiral’s attention back to his own group. The Bonder and his companion were back in the separated forms again. “I guess – since we got here first – we’re going up?”

Snuff, stomp, snuuuuuff, from Wallop.

“No, I don’t care how much you don’t like stairs, nobody is carrying you.”

“Should we expect more of these Spectres inside?” Hiral asked Li’l Ur.

“They going to come out of the walls and floor at us?” Seeyela asked. “From the perspective of an ambush hunter, that’d be annoying.”

“Come to think of it,” Hiral said. “They came through doors and up the stairs here. Didn’t come through the floor or wall at all.”

“It’s the stone,” Li’l Ur said. “There is something that makes it resistant to energy.”

All eyes went to the missing chunk of it where Hiral had landed his first Annihilation of Amin Thett.

“I said resistant, not immune,” the little lich clarified with crossed arms.

“Anything else we should know about them?” Seeyela asked.

“Yes,” Li’l Ur said, his head turning as his blue-flame eyes looked at something only he could see. “From the energy I sense, these were likely lesser Spectres.”

“There’s a difference?” Hiral said.

“A few minor – but important – differences, actually,” the lich replied. “For starters, Lesser Spectres aren’t quite as strong as the regular kind. It’s in the name, after all. More than that, though, they possess no intellect of their own. No sapience. Much like puppets, they are given an order, and they follow it.

“Defend this tower. Attack that castle. Conquer those lands in our Mistress’s name. That kind of thing. Beyond the order given, there is nothing else they can or will do. Finally, while they are risen, undead spirits, their lack of individuality – of a soul – gives them one strength the regular Spectres do not have.”

“And what’s that?”

“They are very difficult to truly kill. Barring exceptional circumstances, given time, they will reform again and again to continue carrying out their orders. It is a much… ahem… lesser version of a lich’s immortality, but equally as potent in the right circumstances. Like this tower.”

“How long are we looking at between killing them and reforming?” Yanily asked, eyes already going to the empty doorways.

“Hours, at the minimum,” Li’l Ur said. “However, that will mainly apply to those we find within the tower itself.”

“Why’s that?” Seeyela asked.

Li’l Ur once again looked at the chunk missing from the wall. “Exceptional circumstances.”

“Ah,” Seeyela said in understanding.

“OP,” Yan said at the same time.

“So, while the tower is probably the same in that the Spectres…” Seena started.

“Lesser Spectres,” Li’l Ur corrected, and Seena just raised an eyebrow at him. “Mistress, it’s important you know the difference as we build our army. You deserve much better than this… this fodder.”

“Still not needing any army.”

“Perhaps not now, but rest assured that when you do decide you want one, its ranks shall be filled only with regular and greater undead. As is fitting of you.”

Seena opened her mouth to argue the point, then just seemed to give up, and went back to her earlier points. “The tower is probably built with stone the lesser Spectres can’t move through, but we’ll have to deal with them reforming if we take too long.” When she finished, she pointed down across the courtyard to what looked like a door at the base of the tower. Beyond most logic – outside the realm of magical shenanigans – the tower really was almost an upside-down pyramid, with the base of it being little more than twelve feet across, and then widening as it rose. “That’s our way in.”

“Just looking at it, I have to agree with Wallop,” Yanily said. “That’s going to be a lot of stairs.”

“Then we’d best get stared,” Seena responded.

“Or,” her sister said, a sheet of black unrolling beside her. “We could just start at the top and work our way down.”

Snuff.

“Wallop agrees,” Romin said, in case anybody had missed the Rune-o’s intent.

Seena seemed to consider it a moment – likely wondering if they should face any traps or danger inside head-on so they could report them to the other groups – then nodded. “If we gain control of the tower, I’m sure we’ll figure out what other defenses it has.”

Seeyela thumbed over her shoulder to the portal. “This’ll take us to the roof. Watch out for cannons or whatever was shooting us when you come out.”

“Hope you heard that, big guy,” Seena said, then walked over and gave Wallop the shoulder tap.

Another snuff.

“He’s reconsidering his opinion of stairs,” Romin said.