Icarus Awakens

"To all of the faithful, the Bastion Saint has fallen. Show these heretics the fury of the Octyrrum." Gtoll's voice echoed out across the sending stones given to each squad leader as the true elites descended from the sky. Murdon froze in the strongpoint they'd managed to take with no small amount of sacrifice. Ashier, dead? He'd wanted them to answer for their crimes, and yet a small part of him felt like he was back in Hagain watching his home burn down.

Hands warm enough to be felt through his armor seized him and soon he was embraced in a deep kiss, shaking him out of the shock. Come on Mr. Darkscalie, Tounaki thought toward him. Can't lose your grip now.

Murdon took another precious second to breathe her in, knowing that the future they were fighting for was growing ever more distant. Then his friend butted in sounding very taken aback. You, you do know I can hear you if you use the Telepathic Network, right? Also, who is Mr. Da-

"Target the monsters!" Murdon yelled down the reinforced structure to the lower leveled Blessed manning ballista, stopping Lograve from teasing him about the pet name. For now. "We're not doing enough against Zozar. The rest of our forces need to take more of the city, but they're not going to do that with the enemy's reserves in play!"

The enchanted mechanisms thumped in reply, though he frowned as he watched most miss their target. It's their damned Empathic Link, Lograve commented telepathically, sobering. They might as well be a swarm, but each still has individuality. Practically cheating.

What's the plan when they reach us? Quala asked from where she was trying to heal some of the more seriously wounded. She was down the the dregs of her mana after Murdon had called for a dangerous push to take the weapons platform. Aside from the lives lost, they'd also drained the Cleric and the mana potions they'd brought along. Quala had one or two Flash Heals left along with the slower Healing Hands power, and it was due to this reduced potential that Murdon had had to call off the plan to support other teams. It'd turned out to be for the best now that the true elites were storming the mountain as they'd doubtlessly target places like this first.

We hunt.

…

Evalyn took one look at the mess that was Daniel's chest, saw that even his armor was refusing the repair, and started to make the call. "Everyone, smo-"

"No! We can do this." Daniel protested while quickly grabbing more corruption from the immediate area. Alex's song also finished granting him a well needed mana boost as he immediately triggered the given effect. She didn't start playing again, making him wonder if the B team had run out of mana potions to feed her.

Hunter likewise backed up once the razor stomper had revealed it had fearsome ranged options to mix in, wisely baiting it toward a group of maulers that had been heading toward Khiat. Using the monster to clear projections for them helped in a sense, but it would get overcharged from the next mana burst just like them and have free use of any expensive abilities it was reserving. The last shield would be free to drop as well, freeing whatever was in the center.

"One more hit like that and you're dead," Evalyn warned.

"So nothing's changed." Daniel pulled out an elemental smoke bomb and tossed it near enough to the razor stomper to hit it with the splash damage. As expected the monster managed to clear it out by rapidly moving its winds, literally cutting the damaging cloud apart, but the single tic of lightning it had been exposed to refreshed Elemental Onslaught. "Shuni, I need your smoke bombs if you can make it to me. I'm going to peel off, drink a mana potion, and keep building up corruption. Not sure if elemental onslaught is doing anything for the corruption damage, but if I'm only going to get one more shot I'm going to make it count."

"It'll get me out of position to drop the next set of wardens, but who am I to refuse someone as handsome as you?" Shuni called back. "You're just lucky that thing didn't hit you in the face."

Brief turmoil crossed the Empathic Link again and it would have failed if they had it set higher than medium intensity. Thankfully it remained stable as it would've otherwise led to a lethal moment of weakness for Hunter. Daniel tracked his progress through the link as he used both smoke bombs and claw attacks against the occasional projection to continue stacking Elemental Onslaught.

Soon enough, a shadow popped into place beside him as he was running between cages. Daniel sucked in a breath as he saw a faint purple glow emanating from one of his girlfriend's sleeves, but like most on the team she'd avoided major sources of corruption. "Hanging in there?" she asked, holding out his resupply of elemental smoke bombs.

Daniel grimaced at the ongoing pain in his chest, the necrotic energy stubbornly clinging to him despite the passage of time. "I've had worse," he bit out, quickly passing most of the smoke bombs into a bag of holding while chucking another at the razor stomper. The thought crossed his mind that it'd be a very bad idea to touch her right now as his hands were shining with fell light from over a dozen casts of Imbue Astral when he finally had what should've been an obvious idea. "Shuni, hold still."

"Ok," she said warily, head flitting about to make sure they weren't being targeted while she was out of stealth. Daniel breathed deeply, the damage to his chest making this very painful, then used Imbue Astral while mentally designating Shuni. It almost felt like he got a prompt in his head in response, as if his Spoke had decided to give him an alert in the same way he received power descriptions from awakenings in hybrid form, but nothing concrete materialized.

It didn't matter. Daniel let out the breath as a relieved sigh, watching as the corruption afflicting the Rogue was absorbed into his hands. The razor stomper was still a critical threat, but if they could overcome it he'd just made the rest of the rift clear far less stressful. "Anyone ever tell you you're amazing?" Shuni asked, rubbing the spot on her arm that had been cleansed.

"Only you, every day." The dyssynchrony spiked and Daniel tore away, lingering disquiet remaining in the Empathic Link. We have to come to terms with this at some point, he realized. Either that, or we can't use the link around Shuni. "Gotta see to everyone else. Keep being amazing yourself." He didn't need Pack Insight to judge Shuni's reaction to the weak farewell.

He had to put it out of his mind for all their sakes, running instead to Sigron and Khiat. All the while the Knight had been protecting the archer, allowing her to decimate the regular projections and snipe the weak points of bastions. It didn't matter if there was cover in the way as long as Khiat could see any part of her target. By now she had as many ways to modify her attacks as Daniel's blast bow did, from doubling arrows, controlling them in the air, or use of the Sun Shot spell. That wasn't including the arrowheads he enchanted for her.

Taken together Khiat was becoming a regular artillery piece, though she and her protector weren't the fastest. The casters had taken the largest toll on them, blanketing the area surrounding them with corruption circles in a field wide enough that they couldn't escape. Purple crystals replaced skin and carapace at various points along their bodies, though Sigron was better off with his bond hands suppressing the growth.

"No time to explain," Daniel said as he triggered Imbue Astral twice while running by. Hunter was still doing his best to drag the razor stomper toward more projections, and while that bought time, it accelerated the progression of the rift fight as well. At the same time two trails of purple corruption flowed from his friends and into his hands, the razor stomper slashed apart a crawler far more many times than necessary.

Next in the rally was Tak, continuing to hold off a group of projections before they would reach their backline. He'd taken some of the damage inflicted on Hunter by the razor stomper and was under the highest corruption burden. The Totem Warrior was decent at dodging but also too confident in his durability. It took two activations to fully cleanse him, but as soon as he did the formerly tainted wounds began to heal once more. Unfortunately, his own was still doing poorly and there was no magic on the field to reverse necrotism.

"Gods." Evalyn paled slightly as he neared her, though she remained diligent in keeping lightfoot song up. "You're actively decaying."

"Thomas will fix it later," Daniel panted, haggard from the doom run of grabbing as much corruption as he could while keeping Elemental Onslaught refreshed. "This works we should be in the clear."

"I'm pulling us out of here if it doesn't," she said resolutely as the corruption drained from her. "I'm serious, Daniel, I'm not losing anyone again."

He was about to say she was getting a little overbearing until it clicked. "Aughal wasn't your fault."

"I'd like to think that." Her eyes told him there was more to be said, but the giant death monster was still rampaging and Hunter was running out of rope. He could feel his brother starting to lose stamina as he was forced to constantly dodge and keep awareness of his surroundings. Hunter was level 2 and could continue fighting for some time, but it was only peak performance allowing him to contest something at level 4. As it was he'd have been screwed if the cages didn't block everything thrown at him.

I have just enough for Opportune Moment, Daniel thought. We corrupt it, get the next mana burst and use that to finish it. He Jumped up and flared out wings again, flying through the web of projectiles and cables that had been diminished after the razor stomper had cut through both. It was trying to hit Hunter with its tail again like a spear fisher, the echoing attacks turning a single thrust into a deadly volley.

Daniel tried to pick up the pace after seeing one of the spectral attacks score a deep wound across Hunter's side, but he had to quickly turn in the air as another black bolt came at him. The razor stomper had shot it without looking at him, giving no tell until the attack itself had manifested. Necrotic death passed just under him, close enough that his seventh sense could feel the death contained within.

Still, he'd avoided it. Opportune Moment bottomed out his mana again and while the razor stomper turned to face him, it didn't seem to have any power to directly counter his time dilation. Two more necrotic bolts flashed out but they were far easier to dodge like this. Then he was within reach of the monster's arms, the bottom two angling up as much as they could while the two above pinned him in. Daniel was forced upward, though he didn't escape unscathed as a line of sharp pain attested to most of one heel being sliced off. But it didn't matter, he just needed to land this blow and the team could finish the job. He extended both claws toward the razor stomper's throat-

His back hit the edge of one of the cages and he regained consciousness in time to hit the ground, momentum carrying him into one as his body bounced and rolled. That probably saved his life as the razor stomper was still on him, trying and failing to stab him through the door. Daniel tried to move but found himself temporarily stunned by what had happened. It came back as his awareness did.

The monster had headbutted him. Simple as that, but it had stopped him from getting any damage in. Stiffly moving himself into a corner he sighed in relief as he saw the corruption still gathered around his hands, then grimaced at the trail of blood on the floor left from his mangled foot. The armor was repairing there, at least, giving him some protection.

Get out of there! Hunter blared into his head. Use smoke and run.

I just need to hit it once. Just a scratch.

It will kill you first.

Daniel clenched his hands, the claws beginning to bite into his palm. If we don't do this then it was all for nothing!

Stolen story; please report.

Hunter mentally sighed, and through the ringcat's worry and exasperation clouding the link he could tell the rest of the team was trying to draw the razor stomper away from him. Evalyn was definitely calling it now, unless he could make the plan work with one last attempt. But he was no longer blinded by his oath, only desperation, and he could see how unlikely it was that he could make this work.

If I was faster, or maybe if we could get it frozen with a frostfang dagger… no, no way Shuni's getting more than one hit in, and it'd probably resist with its level advantage. His mind worked furiously, but bereft of Moment of Clarity the effort wasted real time. Elemental Onslaught was ticking down. The voices coming over the sending stone as the team tried to bail him out seemed more distant, until one spoke to him directly.

"Daniel, you need to get up!"

"Alex?" He blinked as realized that his injuries, combined with the ongoing affects of the necrotic energy, had almost made him pass out. Daniel gritted his teeth as he forced himself back upright. "I need to do this. Everyone's counting on us. Have to stop the war."

"Why does it have to be you?" Her voice shook slightly as she asked and Daniel had a suspicion her ghost was in the room with him, seeing his injuries. "You look like you should already be dead. I thought it had gotten you that last time! I… I don't know what I'll do if you try again and don't wake up."

"There's no easy way out, Alex. Not here." Daniel coughed and tried to hide the fact that it was getting harder to breathe as time went on. "Not when it matters this much. You, Hunter, Shuni, I love all of you. I don't want to die, but I don't want to see this world burn down. I'm going to fight so we can all have a future, even if I have to bleed and burn and suffer for every step." He justified his words immediately as he rose, putting pressure on his injured foot before leaving the cage and throwing an elemental smoke bomb at a distant projection to refresh his trance.

From what he could tell the team had successfully pulled the razor stomper, although they were having trouble getting away from it. Sigron's Area Denial was the only reason no one had died, though the monster was strong enough to actually break the effect. The Knight was able to reassert it before a followup would kill him, but only by shrinking the shielded area each time afterward. All the while it fended off Khiat's arrows with red slashes while the tail kept Hunter and Tak at bay.

"Look at them," he grunted while using his last healing syringe on his thigh. While the necrosis was still in his body the injured ankle hadn't been directly affected and recovered slightly, though far less than it should have. "Alex, this world is fucked up, but it has the chance to be something better. If we don't give it our all we'll never see that day. They know that. It's why we fought Casia." Whether Alex understood the reference or not didn't matter. They were talking on the team's sending frequency. "I'm going in. With all of us fighting, there's a better chance."

He heard Alex take in a breath over the sending stone. "If I help you and you die, I'll never get over that. Promise me you won't."

"I promise. But I don't have time to wait for Glimpse."

"It's not that. I… I don't know what this will do." A single note played out, and there was something strange to it that Daniel couldn't fully grasp. Nothing seemed to happen, though he could tell by the slight breathlessness in Alex's next words that she'd figured something out. "I can't fight with you, but I'm not going to sit around and be useless either. If you believe you can do this, then I believe in you."

Across the power core, Evalyn was desperately trying to keep Lightfoot Song steady while pulling the team out. She wasn't going to let this be another disaster. If she just played hard enough, they could close the speed gap and escape cleanly. Yet, putting her entire heart into it wasn't enough. Sigron was getting worn down, ranged attacks from Shuni and Khiat did nothing, and the two remaining team members couldn't commit to a melee without risking imminent death. The only saving grace was that they'd gotten lucky and must have reduced the projections to just above a kill threshold, leaving few to intervene as they made their escape.

But it wasn't enough. She had an enchanted instrument, new styles and more experience, enough to keep her abilities working in top condition with proper rotation. There were no more hidden reserves, no resource she could tap to improve her buffs. The songs that had given the team critical enhancements throughout the entire fight had just fallen short.

Evalyn was considering truly desperate plays when a second instrument sounded. At first she thought it was Alex attempting to refresh Glimpse of Dawn on someone, but this was different yet familiar. She'd felt this one other time, during the battle against the lightning dragon. There Bards had put aside culture, convention, and class antipathy to combine their talents. It was difficult, something you couldn't just do by playing two songs together. She hadn't heard of any powers that allowed it either, not at the lower levels at least. But as the world was finding out, the gods had restricted much.

Alex's violin played in tune and time with her guitar. It wasn't the exact melody but it wasn't a different song either. The Virtuoso danced around her melody, improvising in a way Evalyn never could as the magic of her music combined with the Bards. Alex wasn't just supporting Lightfoot Song, she was Accompanying it with the first feature she'd ever awakened. As a cost paid in the blood of six regions would attest, the effect of Alex's power was far more potent than her level should be.

The two continued to play, the music twining as the performers exchanged leads while the other supported, the track that Evalyn was originally playing evolving as she struggled to keep up with Alex's talent. Daniel, along with the rest of the team, felt the magic empowering them heighten. He took one step, and then another, the room flying by as he moved twice as fast as before. It wasn't as much relative speed as Opportune Moment gave him, but this time he had the entire team to rely on.

"Coming in, now or never!" The razor stomper took notice of his shout as well, turning from Evalyn who it had just sensed as a major threat as the one bearing corruption neared. All four limbs spread out in anticipation of his arrival, the sharpened tip of the tail hovering over one tall shoulder ready to strike out should those fail. Fearlessly, Daniel kept running down the rows of cages blurring by, calculating his next move. He'd have to go for the chest, the razor stomper was nimble enough to pull away a leg should he aim low.

A deeper voice suddenly joined his war cry as Sigron broke Area Denial, then slammed his sword against his shield. It began to glow across the front, different from the usual light ringing the side that indicated his defensive ability. Carried forward as if launched by a catapult, the Knight flew shield first into the back of one of its knees, knocking the monster slightly off guard. The maneuver left Sigron in the air, and without his wings deployed he was vulnerable to a counterattack. But it never came.

Hunter and Tak used Mirror Strike in an odd way, the point of intersection appearing well in front of the monster. As a committed attack it would have been suicidal to use against the razor stomper if one of its red slash could intercept them, but both finished the attack out of its reach. They hadn't used it to deal damage but gain momentum. As they continued through the air Hunter morphed into an alpha ringcat, and then both landed on opposite sides to grapple the lower limbs. This too let them exposed as the monster could have struck at them with any of its remaining blades. But it never did.

Daniel Jumped upward once in range, extending his claws once more as he prepared to dodge with every bit of aerial mobility his equipment and powers gave him. The razor stomper's upper limbs were poised to cut him down, but they adjusted in the last moment as Khiat loosed her attack. Two ancestral arrows had been combined with Double Shot, enhanced in the strange way the dusker was able to by feeding mana into her weapon, and then fired in a Sun Shot. Rather than strike together the arrows parted in midair, two bright stars arcing away from each other and then flexing back to strike at the razor stomper's head. The two arrows clinked off of red slashes, though to Daniel's faint astonishment it looked like both had survived impact with the barrier even if the attack had been averted.

Then the tail descended, intending to spear him before his claws got close enough for contact. The last member of Wingcraft appeared out of a teleport, throwing herself in the way. Daniel started to scream, before he remembered the power she'd used the last time she'd bailed him out of certain death. In fact, she'd done more than just teleport as, nearby, two thrown daggers found their mark. Her Sneak Attack was enough to take out the two casters struck in the head. As their life force joined the rest of the projections in the rift above, enough kills had been made to trigger another threshold.

"Have to hope, this is enough," Shuni grunted as she took the spear dead on, arms crossed in front of her. Her mana began to rapidly drain at a ludicrous pace, arresting the tail and canceling out the damage. It would've broken through her ability before the mana wave reached her, but a last minute activation of the Glimpse of Dawn granted to her bought enough time. Spectral copies of the attack repeated the strike, but with the fourth mana pulse restoring 300% of her pool she had enough to hang on.

Daniel ended his vertical charge point first, drilling into the monster and infecting it with as much corruption as he could. The damage was registered and the world… slowed.

…

The Incarnate was under a bit of pressure. Not as much as, say, the team fighting an enemy twice their level, but ever since Alex had used Ode to the Wanderer it had been doing everything it could to screen her from the astral corruption. It would've been impossible if its presence couldn't cleanse it passively, why that was it had no idea, it didn't even fully understand what the corruption was, but even so it required active control that was beginning to strain its formidable existence.

It was also beginning to grow worried with how much its cognition was developing outside of sleep mode. The Incarnate was taking too much into consideration where Alex was involved. It had the implanted desire to protect her, yes, but how far should it go to do so? Reshape the world itself so there was no chance she could ever come to harm? That was at least partially doable, but the risks were too great. Provoking Balance had taught the Incarnate a valuable lesson in not destabilizing the very fabric of reality.

Still, it was beginning to take sides in small ways. You could say it had been doing that all along as the unique benefits it granted to power assignment affected those closest to Daniel more often, but the Tyrant that had just died was perhaps the most affected by this and they weren't his friend. Or, hadn't been. The Incarnate was trying to find a balance and felt it was doing a decent job so far, allowing the fight to progress without influencing any of the calculations. Alex would be stuck here if Daniel died which wouldn't be for the best, but in the spirit of not leading to the destruction of all it had ever known it had held back.

Remarkable restraint. Besides, it had already offered some help in the form of Alex's power assignments which she thankfully hadn't evolved out of. Ode to the Wanderer was perfect for her even if it was a bit weak. Any source of damage that could affect astral clones would break the effect, and in keeping with fairness as much as it could the Incarnate wouldn't prevent that damage. The corruption was only held at bay because that would strike at Alex's soul through the clone.

Accompanist, the feature allowing her to augment the active Lightfoot Song, was another masterful pick if it did say so itself. Her prospects for joining a lower leveled team and contributing in a way that could grant advancement potential were extremely limited. There was also the unfortunate side effect of the Virtuoso class making her read as a level 3 when it came to combat rewards regardless of what she made up for her lack of fighting proficiency.

It did make sense that a Virtuoso would gain more potential outside of combat, but the Incarnate wanted to give her as much as it could. Thus, a power that would allow her to help Wingcraft without clashing with the Bard they already had. Indeed, it was very proud of itself, and thankful she had awakened the power in time. The Incarnate could help with power assignment, but the rest was up to Alex.

While all of that was going great, it had a problem. Like it said, it had no idea what the astral corruption was. Finally indexing the monster domain hadn't changed anything. It still had a sense for what it was and could quantify how much was contained within Daniel's attack, but for whatever reason other aspects escaped it. Such as if this would be enough to break the level 4 monster's mana structure and disable its powers.

Like in another power core the Incarnate was faced with an edge case decision: Does corruption count as Damage Type: Elemental for the purposes of Ability: Elemental Onslaught? It had punted the decision earlier as it wouldn't have made a difference, but things would be very bad if the monster was allowed to cast more Destruction Bolts. The Incarnate would cease to exist the way things were going. That wouldn't be the worst, part of it was still trying to self-destruct and cheered on the loss of its mortal vessel, but it had to consider the impact the loss of Wingcraft would have on Alex. Given all available knowledge, it was likely she'd starve in the Arcadian before anyone was in a position to rescue her.

Should it intervene based on that level of predictive analysis? It wasn't exactly bending or breaking a rule here, merely arbitrating a gray area, but the Incarnate knew its judgment was compromised. It wanted to say yes, but it also wanted to avoid blowing up the entire world. Balance must be maintained, it couldn't let itself slide down the same slope that had led to the night sun.

At the same time, Damage Type: Radiant was classified as Elemental despite not universally being referred to as such in the Octyrrum's records. So was Damage Type: Necrotic. If it really couldn't understand what corruption was, who was to say it couldn't be considered an element? There was enough wiggle room there, which left one last problem. This would set a precedent. The Incarnate wasn't creating a rule like the one it has used to make Alex Special. The Octyrrum as a whole may not abide by it, but the Incarnate would, if only to stop itself from taking things too far later. Assigning corruption the Elemental keyword could have consequences that not even it could fully predict.

On the other hand, it would kind of suck to leave Alex trapped in the armory. Once Daniel died there wouldn't be an acting administrator, and the teleporters would be disabled. Neither could they open the front door.

Hold on, why did it know that? The Incarnate distractedly approved the keyword change while simultaneously continuing to screen Alex from corruption, though its main focus was now on that issue. The Arcadian was completely separate from it, and there was nothing in the Octyrrum records about it. But for some reason, the Incarnate felt like it understood some of the logic it operated off of. An unsettling feeling descended as it guessed the reason for its confusion. This had something to do with the knowledge Hourglass had prevented it from sharing, even with itself. Which begged the question, what was that tricky god hiding?