Rise of the Omnimage

"Who could have done this!?" Elowin exclaimed. She was known as a forest Nymph charged with helping care for the reserve maintained by the academy. She was accompanied by Faelan. He was a forest Fae charged with the care of the various beasts that roam the reserve. They were dispatched along with various others to investigate a couple of anomalies that had been detected within the zone.

They stood at the edge of a devastated lake surrounded by a former beach now made of slag.

"Spread out! Begin looking for clues as to what took place here! Faelan commanded to the soldiers under their charge. He was irritated because their tracker in a prize champion Cinderpaw was reading as dead. The S-Class beast was extremely difficult to capture and transport. It took several high tiered warriors to subdue and served as a barrier in the fire part of the region to keep one area from expanding into another.

There is nobody in this reserve currently that should be able to take one of them down. He was thinking it was another champion in the reserve that for whatever reason wandered over and they fought, but that didn't even make sense because it had never happened before. They were always careful in keeping the champions separate and their regions filled with their food sources, so they had no reason to wander. In his over 30 years of beast management, this had never happened. They tracked their age and always swapped them out when they were about to die.

Faelan was broken from his thoughts by a blood curdling scream from the hill overlooking the now decimated lake. There was shouting and running then another scream of agony. Elowin and Faelan got to the base of the hill using their tier 6 speed. There were two of their soldiers staggered up the hill with a single foot stuck in the ground with another rooting around. They slowly made their way up the hill and peered into the hole. They were traps of spiked sticks with hardened edges through burning.

When the unsuspecting soldiers had their foot fall into the trap it pierced the front of their leg and caused them to fall either to the side or backwards ripping the front only to stab the spikes into the side or the back of their legs dealing more damage.

"Keep your eyes on the ground!" Elowin shouted. "If there are these two, there are bound to be more. Get up this hill and look around. There has to be something left behind."

A shout came from the edge of where the lakes crater was causing the two leaders to turn around. "Let me know if you find anything up the hill. You two, get them to the skiff and get them to the medical center."

The two made their way over to where they heard the shout as one of the soldiers was walking this way with a pair of white and blue half burned trousers.

"Ma'am! Sir! I found this buried under a fallen tree over in that direction. I looked up the upcoming assignee list and found these colors come from Sergeant Agron's batch of conscripts. These are the colors of Baron Winterhart of the Cocytus Barony." he said.

Elowin pulled up her own data pad and began scrolling looking at the batch of conscripts belonging to the sergeant. As she read up on the instructors and the 14 remaining teams, she was interrupted by the soldiers that came back down the hill. "Ma'am we found nothing up on that hill save for signs of a camp and a medium sized crater that seemed scorched on one side. On this side of the hill over on that side." the soldier pointed to a gap in the trees. "We found tracks where someone stood, laid, and seemed to be dragged off. It looks like the perfect spot for the launch point of a massive AOE attack by my estimation."

Elowin nodded and scrolled through the teams. "Fire...Fire....hmmm." She stopped on a team. "Here. This is a whole team of flame path users. They were hand chosen by Lady Aegis." She showed Faelan her screen. "It's a stretch, but if these tier 2s can do this." she said pointing to the devastation around them. "I think they might have a chance against your champion."

Faelan seemed unconvinced. "Three tier 2s taking down an S-Class that took six tier 4s to bring in? Come on Elo...that's hard to believe." She looked up at him. "First off, we are on duty, Its Elowin. Second, it would make sense that tier 2 users would be headed up into the fire area to farm up fire cores, wouldn't it?"

"It would make sense, but that would make these conscripts geniuses if they could kill the beast, and we don't get geniuses with conscripts often at all. The geniuses are always the nobility and royalty. Once in a generation we get a standout, but nothing like this." Faelan said.

"Look at this area though? We are Tier 6. Are you confident in walking away from a strike that could do this?"

"No. Let's head to the champion's body and see what we can find."

- A short ride later -

"Look." Faelan said pointing down. "You see the cinderpaw bodies all over?"

"Yeah...I've been counting them. I'm at 43." Elowin said. They looked at each other. Suprise written all over their face.

They eventually came to a stop over top of the clearing where the beacon said the champion was and there was its massive body.

They set down and Faelan went to the body of the beast. He was shocked by what he saw.

"There are stab wounds, cuts, and it looks like massive chunks of its flesh were forcefully ripped out." He said.

"Spread out! Find anything that doesn't belong!" He then moved behind the beast seeing scorch marks and a massive crater looking to be made up of many smaller craters. The front of the cinderpaw's lair looked halfway blown away.

"It's core is gone." Elowin came up alongside of him. "Other wounds are pierced lungs, and its insides have been practically incinerated. Which makes sense because the beast only has the massive heat resistance because of its fur."

She saw a puzzled look on Faelan's face as he walked up to the rear end of the beast. "What?" She asked.

He just pointed looking at a bloody messy hind side of the beast in disgust.

"There may be more to this team than meets the eye. They shoved a weapon up it's ass for some reason."