Broken Lands

Sophia tried to reach Dav inside the bubble of stagnant, nearly solid mana. Her aura was pushed away until she carried a feather with it. The feather seemed to anchor her aura, just like her Plumed Domain Ability said it would.

The stale mana shifted. It really was a spell, an active effect created by mana, even though no individual cast it. It was closer to an effect created by an item, but without the object that created it there to make it easier to break.

It was a spell.

"Dav! See if you can break the spell the same way you dealt with the skyeagle's flame Ability!" Sophia shouted, then repeated the shout mentally when Dav didn't answer. She stomped her foot, then tried to send the image of flame being sucked into the phoenix. Maybe that would get through when nothing else did.

The only other thing she could do was keep trying to affect the spell's integrity, but it didn't seem to have a real structure. When she shoved at it with her aura, it seemed to ripple instead of breaking.

The spell collapsed inwards on its own. At least, Sophia thought it was on its own for a single long moment, until light fed by mana spilled outwards. Where Dav had been, there was a glowing pillar of moving stone. Where his head should have been was a glowing sphere of yellow mana that lit the surroundings as mana in colors that ranged from teal to a deep purple swirled around him. Spheres of solid mana danced in the mana flow before they seemed to swirl and vanish into the space that had to be Dav.

It looked like he'd taken her advice, only it hadn't turned out exactly the way she expected. Sophia had expected a momentary flash, possibly even a temporary transformation, like the phoenix in the Arena; she hadn't expected whatever this was with far too much mana swirling around it.

The tendrils shot across the room and seemed to grab the larger bits of mana everywhere. Some of them even reached up towards the ductwork. One tried to make its way under the door, but it retreated again almost immediately.

The mana present in the room dropped. It was almost like she'd walked inside into air conditioning on a hot, humid day. There was nothing obviously different about the room, but it was far more comfortable.

The coolness lasted several minutes, then everything went suddenly quiet. Sophia hadn't even realized how much noise the mazestorm was making until it was gone.

Almost immediately, the glowing pillar near the door flashed brightly and turned into Dav. He fell forward and caught himself on one knee, then stood. "Well, that was something. Is anyone hurt?"

Dav felt it as the ground rose up and swallowed him along with the magic he was fighting. He could move, but it was like swimming in glue; it was slow and difficult. He certainly couldn't fight like this.

He couldn't even breathe. None of the dirt seemed to be sucked in any more than it bothered his eyes, but there was no air there.

Dav tried to push forward, to pull back, to strike something, anything. There was nothing to strike; the dirt that encased him didn't seem to have a weak point of any sort. It was just dirt, like he'd been caught in an avalanche.

Or maybe it was more like quicksand? He was able to move, after all. He'd heard that you weren't supposed to struggle if you stepped in quicksand, but he didn't know if that was really true or not. It certainly didn't apply when the quicksand flowed up from the ground to encase you. There was no slowing down his sinking here.

Maybe he could escape to the side?

Dav tried to push himself to the side. Swimming did seem to work better than trying to run, but it still didn't work worth a damn. He wasn't sure he was making any progress at all, not really. He certainly wasn't out of the way and he was starting to see bright spots; with the lack of air, that couldn't be a good sign. It should be dark underground.

A new bright spot caught his attention. Either that was a glowing feather or he was hallucinating. The second option seemed more likely; Sophia's feathers couldn't fly through the ground.

Wait. He was above ground only a little while earlier; this rose up from below. Maybe Sophia's feathers could cut through it since it was magical. He'd just seen them doing that to the magical motes; her feathers worked as well as his sword did. Maybe that was true here, too.

Dav tried to move towards the feather. It moved faster than he did, but it did seem to become easier to move as he came closer. If only there was some way he could change that, some way he could get rid of the now clearly magical effect that hindered him.

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Dav's thoughts stuttered as he realized he'd overlooked the obvious in his panic. It was a magical effect, and they'd already tested what he could do with a magical effect in the Arena. He could Call it to himself. It might hurt, but unless it was a lot stronger than he expected, it would probably only be disconcerting. It was exceedingly unlikely to be even close to as powerful as the Fire Mana Fissure in the fireflower Hollow. This wasn't connected to all of the plants that made a Hollow; it was loose wild mana that seeped under a door.

He should have thought of that earlier. It was probably the strongest defense he had against magic right now, and it was one that not only had they discussed, he'd actually used it to protect both himself and everyone else.

Dav Called the mana to himself. It seemed solid and unyielding for a moment, before it dissolved into sand that painlessly scoured him from the inside. He could feel it as it wedged its way in, broadening and stiffening as it went. Right behind it, he felt the touch of the Eldritch mana that was his own. It twisted in his mind, telling him that there was a deeper truth to what he saw than what his eyes showed him.

Like the dragon he saw watching him from above the fire mana fissure and the phoenix hidden deep in the flaming skyeagle's magic, something ancient lurked in the wild mana that surrounded him. It was flavored by the very ground he stood on, but that wasn't the truth within. The truth of this mana was that all mana was wild, power content to be given shape and form yet never losing sight of the chaos that birthed it.

This mana was twisted out of true, forced into a form then allowed to float free, unknown and unknowing, separated from both its origin and what it was meant to be. It spoke as much to emptiness as it did land, loss and ruin as much a part of it as solidity. There was a deep sense of mourning at the core, an emotional pain that sought to hurt as it had been hurt.

It flowed through Dav in the wrong direction, not from the inside out, manifesting his mana into the world, but from the outside in. It was unlike anything he'd felt before.

The mana from the skyeagles' fiery assault was shallow and undemanding in comparison, desiring only to impress itself in a flash on the surroundings.

The fire of the fire mana fissure was closer. It, too, tried to overwhelm him. It was too much too quickly; he was fairly certain that it had damaged the part of him that held mana as well as the part that channeled mana. He couldn't even heal himself until it started to heal.

This mana rushed inwards along those channels but it didn't burn and it didn't even scrape the old scars that much. It certainly didn't force its way into his mana pool. Instead, it seemed like it pushed its way into the place he usually Called to. It seemed to shift, almost as if it found what it was looking for. A rush of mana filled him to the brim, but not overfull. The strangely solid mournful mana poured through Dav, overwhelmed by the welcoming wildness that came from the other side. It was strange, like lying on a bed of nails and not being punctured.

He could see everything around him. More than that, he could see a haze of more of the mournful mana. It wasn't all solid, but it all had that same yearning at its core. It was weakest near Sophia and strongest near Jax. A collection of bright solid sparks danced near Jax, mana pleased at the form it took and even happier to be … cleansing? … the other mana.

Dav reached out and Called the haze to himself. It followed the original mournful mana easily, disappearing into nothingness as it moved past him. More haze slipped through the openings into the room, but Dav cleared it all. He could do nothing about the huge mass of mana outside; it was too strong and too coherent for him to touch. The mana that snuck inside, however, was small enough to take the bait of welcome and flit through him.

And then the mass of mana outside was gone.

A moment later, so was all of the mana filling Dav. He slumped to one knee as his view of the world around him was once again limited to his own two eyes.

It was not a limit he minded. He'd far rather be able to see his friends than only see the mana that moved around him, even if he was able to see all of the mana.

"Well, that was something," Dav stated as he stood. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No," Sophia answered quickly. "Are you okay? That looked …" She wasn't even sure how to finish her thought. It looked strange, more than anything else. She almost wanted to believe that it was an illusion, but Dav didn't do illusions; that was something Taika did.

Sophia blinked. Where was Taika? He couldn't have done much during the storm, but that didn't mean he would have been useless. His barriers might even have worked to break up the mana clots like Jax and Dav's swords and Sophia's feathers. She turned towards the table in the kitchen area that held their packs. "Is Taika still in your backpack?"

"It's closed," Dav answered without commenting on how he felt. He made his way to the pack, then opened the flap to reveal a colorful chinchilla who shifted enough to cover his eyes with his front paws. "Wake up, sleepyhead. I can't believe you slept through that."

"Mrfle. All that noise?" Taika removed a paw for just long enough to glare at Dav, then closed his eye and covered it again. "Who could sleep through that? I'm trying to get back to sleep now. Go away."

Sophia giggled, then covered her mouth with her hand as if that would somehow make the sound less silly. "I guess Taika is fine. I can't believe we forgot about him."

"I'm a fashion accessory that's out of fashion," Taika muttered. "But right now I'm a sleepy fashion accessory. Go away. Or at least close the flap so I don't have to listen to you."

Sophia suppressed another giggle. She had to be feeling the emotional high of the fight; she didn't normally giggle!

"We might as well let him sleep," Xin'ri said from across the room. "We don't know when Sweetfire will return, and I'm not sure we want him to know about Taika. Until then, though … Jax, did you know that dealing with a mazestorm would earn us Wisps?"