Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

“Battling silver-ranked monsters sure is a more lengthy proposal.” Force of Raging Torrent thought as her palm strike connected with the bone armor of her opponent, sending the undead crashing toward its three companions, all but one sidestepping the impromptu projectile while continuing to close in on her. She still reveled a bit in her own increased capacity since ranking up, but had to admit that the more reactive and complex monsters were a bit of a dampener. Like many other warriors, Force relished the challenge, but there was a certain quality to the experience of cutting down enemies like wheat before the scythe.

“Compression arts; Carving stream.” She thought, her mana simultaneously gathering the water needed as her special attack activated. Instead of scattering the water into droplets, Force clapped her hands together before thrusting them forward. Her magic compressed and shaped the water into a thin stream, which shot out at a speed hard to track even for her silver rank senses and punched through the closest two undead. During the second which the attack lasted, she swept the stream horizontally, almost bisecting the armor and creature inside as well as that behind it. While this didn’t instantly kill the creatures, it at least hampered them enough that only two of the four could close the distance simultaneously, conjured bone swords already swinging.

While the undead wraiths had the attributes of their rank, Force had the skill. For all her adventuring career, she had been developing and refining her way of fighting, seeking out martial practitioners to learn from them while taking on the toughest contracts she could find in the rural Autumn lands. And she had been rewarded for her perseverance, as one particularly tough battle during the last monster surge had triggered a racial gift evolution, evolving her human talent for special attacks into new heights. The new evolution allowed her special attacks to interact with her water constructs, gaining more powerful or expanded effects if used in combination. Force had come to think of it as the foundation for her combat style, and along with Dragonfly and her name it had been the most formative gains she had received that day amongst the death and desolation.

It had still taken a long time to reach silver, at least when comparing to the sponsored scions of the more magic-dense heartlands of the kingdom. But Force at least thought that she had used the time well; both in refining her martial arts and the combination abilities to make sure that her foundation was as solid as possible. The result was her measured and forceful fighting style where controlled strikes and special attacks combined with the nature of water to form devastating results.

When she had been charging ahead with the rest of the assembled silver ‘spearhead’ she had been eager to prove her growth against the deviants, but as their opponents revealed not only their six silver-rankers but several silver rank undead constructs spreading out along the battle lines, something had to be done. And it had fallen to her as the ‘youngest’ to do so.

While she had initially felt a bit cheated on her opportunity, Force couldn’t deny the importance of her work as she imagined the consequences should they be allowed to run rampant around the lower rankers. Two bone swords closed in, only to be met by a pair of open palms, the ensuing discharge of force from her confluence essence channeling the very same concept had the swords and their wielders thrown backwards straight into a pair of conjured blobs of water large enough to envelop them. The restraining globules held the struggling undead floating aloft, but their strength would have them break free in short order. Force aimed to expedite that process, especially since the pair damaged by her cutting stream was once more charging straight at her.

“Palm arts; Clap like Thunder”

Bringing her hands together once more, the two blobs of water mimicked the motion as they were brought together with enough force to give off a sound like the very air had cracked, slamming together just as the remaining two undead passed between. The result was the four bone-clad specters all trapped in a single water sphere, their armor cracked and breaking from the impact.

“Palm arts; Scatter the Rain.”

Another measured palm strike hit the sphere, the detonation shredding through trees and foliage in a wide cone as the undead were sundered once more as they were thrown about the landscape and bombarded with water piercing water droplets.

While Force knew it wasn’t necessary to form the technique names in her mind, it still helped her as part of her combat meditation. And, she had to admit, it felt kind of satisfying. She knew that many warriors even liked shouting out loud to make their moves sound impressive or intimidate their opponents.

When she saw the four undead, broken and battered but not defeated as they were getting up and conjuring new weapons while starting to restore their armor, Force smiled.

“I see that the resilience of silver-rankers holds true for you abominations as well. But fear not. At the end of the stream, the waterfall awaits.” she said, striding into battle once more. There were many steps left on the path towards the heavens, after all.

“I must say, grand elder, that you fight well. The last couple of Pain cultists I faced were more… enthusiastic than competent.” Deputy director Rupert Versis commented even while links from conjured chains were scattering around him like the spray of a waterfall hitting solid rocks. Each swipe of his claws almost hurt to look at from their sheer rending power, only to be followed by the sonic ripples able to shatter almost any obstacle within his rank. During his career, Rupert had found that the vibrations of his sonic strikes had few matches when it came to carving through solids, and he was using it most skillfully at the moment, his claws forming an almost spherical defense as they intercepted and cleaved through the chains sprouting from the land around him.

“And from your skill, it is obvious why the local dregs had to bring in outside help.” grand elder White responded from where he stood on a small pillar of entwined lengths of conjured fetters, continuously bringing forth more of them to assail his foe. “It does not matter in the end. Lord Pain has blessed me with the strength to carry me to the heavens. I will personally tear them down.”

“Then I don’t suppose you’d heed a gentleman’s request to let me just take a quick walk over there and take care of some foul vandalizing of the landscape?” Rupert asked sardonically, indicating the open space visible a few dozen meters behind the opposing grand elder. As White’s response was yet another wave of thrashing metal links, each as wide as Rupert from where they seemed to rip free from the earth below, Rupert felt he had to interpret the response as negative. “The chain essence is a given. And vast is not out of the question from the size of some of the chains and the area he seems to control with them.” the leonid thought as he unleashed a siege-roar to meet them, using his powers of sound manipulation to further direct and focus the sonic wave to sunder the incoming fetters.

While Rupert couldn’t just ignore the threat of the grand elder, his primary objective was what he assumed to be the ritual site behind him. Had it been most other foes, he would probably have been able to work his way around and force the battle to take place in the very space he wanted to destroy, something that lent itself very well to Rupert’s set of abilities. But Rupert had to give it to them; this silver-ranker was quite hard to get past.

“I guess the old adage; ‘If you can’t get past, then through is usually the best option’ holds true even here.” Rupert thought as he activated one of his more destructive mobility powers. Where his stride had been powerful before, each step now cracked the ground as sonic shockwaves like thunderclaps erupted as soon as he began pushing off the ground. The myriad chains were either shattered or thrown aside as he closed half the distance to his foe before being forced to slow down as a spinning ‘drill’ of entwined, barbed links shot straight at him.

Part of it shattered in the face of another siege-roar, but the mass of conjured metal just came pouring like a river of chains having broken through its dam. Rupert could just keep it off him through furious claw-work, but was finally halted as all his silver-rank speed and focus was absorbed to the singular task. After seconds of holding the stalemate, the leonid was forced one step back. Then two. Then finally a few meters as a single, thin set of links managed to sneak up on him and yank him backward by the foot.

Even as it was destroyed in an instant, it had done its work to increase the distance between the fighters yet again, halving the gains Rupert had made. As the torrent stopped, Rupert was about to spring at his foe yet again, but halted warily as he sensed another unfamiliar silver-ranked aura approaching.

A small swarm of incorporeal spirits flew down from the skies, coalescing behind the grand elder who seemed unperturbed by the celestine woman with amethyst hair and several layers of robes who manifested from the spectral stream.

Even over the clash, Rupert’s very sharp sense of hearing could pick out their words without hindrance.

“Grand elder White, I must request a switch. The fire and life aspects of the phoenix my opponent possesses is a matchup I cannot handle unless in the presence of my god’s avatar. The rube even ruined my palanquin.” the woman, apparently a priestess of Undeath, said with a sulking tone.

“Why should I let your weakness interrupt my tempering, priestess?” White asked curtly even as he sent more waves of chains to keep Rupert busy.

“Because the phoenix is in pursuit of me, as one might have expected. So unless you want this place to become a much more complex battlefield and trust me enough to fight close alongside me, I recommend that we switch.” she said, a small smug smile at having essentially made the choice for them both already by coming here as she apparently knew that trust was in rather short supply between them.

As if to emphasize her words, a green comet was visible closing in over the treetops, the flaming figure of grand elder Lark at its center.

“I will make clear that you do not honor our agreement with such behavior, priestess.” grand elder White answered between teeth clenched in cold fury. “But very well, ally, I shall acquiesce. Fail this at your peril.”

“Oh, don’t worry, White. One little noisy cat should be little before the gifts of my patron.” she said, amethyst eyes trained on Rupert even as more spectral forms were emerging from within her robes. One even opened a parasol to shield her from the pale sun barely making it through the overcast sky.

At the same time, White unleashed a final small tidal-wave of conjured chains to keep Rupert occupied before switching targets and moving off into the forest towards the incoming grand elder Lark.

Rupert did not have time to see what came of that particular struggle as he now found himself facing a new foe, also unknown to him so far.

“My lady.” Rupert greeted with a nod, getting a sadistic smile in return.

“You must be the famed deputy director. While your body looks quite pleasing, it is what can be extracted from its insides which interests me the most. It's always a shame that the soul is inviolable, but I assure you that what comes from the mould of the right soul can be quite efficient as well with the gift of my lord.” she answered, still taking Rupert in as some price that she had yet to seize.

From the lack of zombies and the obvious entourage of spirits, it wasn’t hard for him to guess her preferences. Spiritual undead were almost always a pain to fight unless you had access to disruptive force damage. While most were created almost like monsters from areas with high death affinity, Rupert had heard that it was possible to animate them from corpses as well, the undead ectoplasm creating a kind of incorporeal echo from the remnant imprint of the soul that had once inhabited the body, but twisted by the caster’s magic. He had heard rumors of higher ranked spirit summoners to work the foul art of soul torture to gain access to the real deal in order to mass produce more powerful spirits in the image of the captive soul.

Back at bronze-rank, this matchup would have been quite problematic for Rupert, whose strength lay in physical and resonating force damage, albeit with a few other tricks up his mane. But silver rank resources and a racial gift evolution had provided him with enough new options as to not feel overly threatened. It was still an enemy silver-ranker, but it should not be as skewed in her favor as much as she seemed to believe.

“I assure you that I am quite striking in form and spirit, my lady, but sadly I will have to deny you both.” Rupert replied before closing the distance in a single leap as spirits gathered into a wall of screaming faces, mouths open as if to swallow him.

“Form the aegis of ecto- aaarkh” her spell chant began before suddenly warping into a garbled croak. The wall lost cohesion, and was blasted apart by one of Rupert’s roars just before he would have collided with the spectral mass, the interruption caused by a small flick of Rupert’s wrist as he performed one of his more niche special attacks. He simply thought of it as his silencing, and it could be made in response to spell chants as it took control of the words before they even formed completely, instead detonating the forming sounds inside their speaker and almost always interrupting the caster unless they had spectacular fortitude, superb mental discipline to keep the intent of the spell intact or other more unusual ways of speaking. The damage inflicted was little to a silver ranker, but the lost spell meant a lot more as Rupert was now upon her.

Even so, she was a silver-ranker. The first swipes of his claws met an interposed parasol, which had been put into her hand by the incorporeal spirit which carried it just in time for her to raise it like a shield. To Rupert’s surprise, neither his claws nor the sonic slashes tore through it as the beautiful patterns lit up to create a magical barrier. A couple more of his strikes were deflected the same way before he had to take a step back when a ghostly straight sword was suddenly thrust straight through the parasol from the inside, passing effortlessly through the intricate accessory. Rupert did suspect that he wouldn’t be as unharmed had it hit him.

“Incarnate vengeance!” she chanted, using the distance and the fact that his silencing was still unavailable to send thirty-two spiritual projectiles in homing arcs against him, each looking like a small incorporeal screaming skull gleaming with the purple energy of Undeath. Rupert’s roar dispersed some of them, and his sonic barrier some more, but there were still over a dozen which impacted him. The pain was chilly and tingling, and seemed to carry some kind of affliction with them as Rupert could feel his mana almost ‘freezing’ for a lack of better words, pain accompanying each expenditure.

“Where the corporeal fails, in ethereal triumphs. What is sound or claws to a ghost?” she taunted before casting another spell.

“Spectral champions, wield your grudges to defend my honor.”

The specters around her were suddenly filled with the same purple glow as the projectiles, their eyes and mouths aglow as swords of the same energy manifested in their hands. They came at Rupert, faster than before with unnerving shrieks which would probably have damaged his mana even more had he not shielded himself with his control over sound. She even followed it up with another spell.

“Undeniable vengeance!”

As the specters drew closer, the new spell caused their blades to shift from the purple to the silver, gold and blue of transcendent light. They scattered when they drew close to Rupert before striking from every direction, like a hemisphere contracting around him. Just before their line of sight to one another was cut off, Rupert felt a twinge of satisfaction at the small frown on her face, caused by him reaching into a pouch and throwing up a round chime the size of a fist to hover in the air before him. It was a beautiful creation, wrought in a light shade of blue with silk ribbons of white and red hanging from it as decoration.

Then Rupert roared. Not the directed cone of the siege-roar, but one that exploded from him in a burst. And continued. The sound was shrill, gaining further high notes as the bell resonated with it. The trembling in the air took on a distinct blue sheen of disruptive force damage, and the vicious spirits were shredded, like cloth being violently frayed, the effect being greater the closer they had come to the leonid. Some of the spirits even tried to retreat, but Rupert had waited until the last moment. None survived the attempted flight to escape its radius.

Cutting off his channeled attack, Rupert sprung at her, his step creating a small thunderous explosion, tinted the same blue by the bell which floated along with Rupert. Once more, his first two claws were deflected by the raised parasol, but this time he followed with the siege roar even as more projectiles and spectral blades started emerging to target him from behind the intervening ‘shield’.

The now disruptive damage tore through the shield, and Rupert accepted several stinging projectiles and a glancing sword strike to tear the parasol to shreds. Finally standing face to face with his opponent, her face contorted in severe focus as she brought up her ghostly blade to force him back. It was half-shredded by the blue-tinted sonic barrier Rupert once more deployed in order to stay on the offensive, and another set of claws tore through her layers of robes even as more specters emerged from within.

What followed was a few minutes of fierce close combat fighting, Rupert accepting minor blows and letting minor spells through in order to continue pressing her as he had a distinct advantage in close combat and having baited out and dispatched her boosted minions. Trails of blood remained in their wake, shaken into a fine mist by the sonic vibrations, as the leonid pressed the pale celestine ever backwards.

“Ungraspable gho- akkkhss” she began, the spell being interrupted the same way as the last handful of times. Rupert had seen her mobility power when she arrived at the battlefield, and due to its long range and spectacular nature, he had assumed it to be a spell. A spell he had started saving his silencing for, to continue to press the advantage he had been building up.

They were almost at the large ritual site when the priestess apparently decided that she had enough of this experience. From the tattered remains of her layers of voluminous robes, a pale hand retrieved a painted fan, the latticework crafted from pale purple crystals. She even accepted another of Rupert’s attacks in order to open it, displaying the three ferocious warriors depicted on it as part of the decorations.

Realizing that it was some kind of troublesome object, Rupert immediately swiped for it with his destructive special attack, only to realize that she was actively interposing it between herself and him. The brittle crystal and soft silk tore immediately, releasing an explosion which threw them both back a few meters. Being silver-rankers, both landed relatively gracefully, Rupert’s claws carving furrows in the ground where he had reached a hand down to stop his momentum.

Where the fan had been, a trio of ghostly warriors were materializing. They had spectral robes and each brandished different weapons; a sword, a naginata and a bow. Their faces were entirely obscured by veils with runes of sealing and restraining covering the incorporeal cloth, and the trio emitted silver rank auras in the upper reaches of the rank. And there was something more to them, something Rupert couldn’t quite place.

“My existence is for lord Undeath to claim, and not worth to be squandered in this incompetent venture. If you meet that imbecile of a grand elder again, tell him that our agreement is over and broken. You have cost me much today, deputy director. My mistress’ prototype was not meant to be spent on those such as yourself. I mean to balance out our fell karma in the future.” she said, backing up as the ghostly trio spread out in a loose formation between her and Rupert. From their stances and competent bearing, it was clear that they would not be easy to just pass by.

On an unspoken signal, the all went on the offensive even as the priestess of Undeath retreated westward, quickly disappearing from sight.

Rupert sighed as he went to work, claw and sonic attack meeting incorporeal blades and grudges unleashed. The ghosts were a lot more competent than the rest, but barring something very unexpected, it was but a matter of the time needed to dispatch them.

“She didn’t even leave me time for a reply. Most discourteous.”

“The flare was this way. Trust this old man to lead you right.” uncle Walker said, waving them through a section with more dense growths of trees which seemed to bend aside to let them pass.

“I just hope we’re not too late.” Kite confided in Will where they ran at a steady pace next to each other. “With all those delays…”

“Sometimes, the fates deal you hands which are simply not what you wanted. But it is still up to us to make the most of them, or change circumstances to better suit us.” the young noble said sagely, but Kite knew that their circumstances grated at him as well.

It had been just as they were finishing up the last wave of summoned minions after facing the group, led by Dancer on the Broken River, that they had seen a red flare go up. It had been close enough that Walker and Grim made the call that they were close enough to assist.

But as the battle as a whole had risen in intensity, simply getting to the location proved to be quite a challenge. Kite had seldom felt so small as when they were forced to take cover several times to avoid discharging powers from the battles between the silver-rankers which, as expected, didn’t remain stationary. One time there had been deafening sounds like those of great bronze bells which shattered nearby trees, showering them with sparks and debris even though they could barely glimpse the fight between the trees in the distance. Had they been normal rankers, Kite was sure that they would have suffered serious injury by mere proximity.

The greatest delay had been when they had to skirt around the areas where grand elder Lark fought a white-haired man who was lifted above the treetops on a massive column of conjured chains, like a grim tree of restraining dominion. Each time the grand elder unleashed his swathes of viridian fire, more of the forest below was set ablaze as the natural magic in this low-density area was nothing before the silver-ranker’s fury. Even moving through a part of forest mostly burned out, the heat was still enough to threaten to sear any exposed skin of the iron-rankers.

In comparison, the lesser scale of the battle raging ahead of them almost felt like a reprieve from the intensity of their journey. It was indeed one of the summoning circles located in a smaller clearing, now just an even patch of dirt with a small cultist camp in disarray. There, the assaulting team of adventurers seemed to have been pushed on the defensive as a fresh band of euphoric berserkers had arrived as reinforcement for the blood cultists. Whatever cultists remained were now at work with providing ranged support as the beleaguered adventurers, one of the sectless groups, were engaged with the gleeful maniacs.

And as the maniacs in question had five bronze-rankers to the adventurers' two, it was rather obvious why they were so pressured. Two of the adventurer iron-rankers were already down, and from the looks some of the euphoric warriors were giving them, this was not a situation where one would want to be left behind as a prisoner.

“Grim, prioritize their ranged support. I will go in for one of the bronze-rankers, which should leave two for the rest of you to engage while we wait for Grim to finish up. Hold nothing back. This will be dangerous. Kite, you know what to do if they activate berserking powers.” Walker ordered without pausing, vanishing through nearby underbrush and appearing behind the enemy bronze rankers who were tearing into their allies, leaf-sword in full swing .

Kite, Dragonfly and Will were hot on his heels as Grim started his precision spellwork, causing the supporting ranged attacks to peter out as the blood cultists were forced to scramble out of the area of the whirling razor storm which appeared at their location.

Their target priority no longer needed to be said, Kite grabbing one of the bronze-rankers' attention by focusing his mana-draining vortices on the woman while Dragonfly and Will leapt to engage the other one that was ‘free’. Over the weeks of the war, he had noticed that directing the mana drain towards a specific target tended to leave him as the focus of their attention. His companions had attested that feeling your mana being drained at a noticeable and rather fast pace did create a pressing kind of subconscious stress and pressure.

The woman Kite was targeting turned from the fallen iron-ranker in front of her, her conjured iron tetsubo slick with blood and her face a mask of grime, flecks of blood and a wide grin.

“Another plaything for the collection? Don’t worry, I’ll leave the important bits intact.” she said, taking a wide stance and swinging her weapon at Kite, the studded length of the greatclub giving off a trembling pressure as it tore through the air.

Even though the attack was made with great force and speed, it was also openly telegraphed as many iron-rankers couldn’t do much about it either way, depending on their level within the rank, their training and their set of abilities. But Kite was in the peak of iron-rank, not too far below the rather low-end bronze-ranker if her aura strength was anything to go by. He was also rather well-trained for his age and station, both in practical experience and having studied under two different silver-rankers. And finally, his power set was apparently quite annoying to face.

She seemed to share the sentiment of his sparring partners, brow furrowing in consternation as her conjured weapon dissolved when Kite swung his katar through the air without even having touched the crushing implement [Pattern-shattering counter]. Compared to the beastmaster’s javelin in flight, using his intent to target the weapon while still early in its trajectory had felt surprisingly easy. A mere moment later, she took a charged beam from Sage to her face, the familiar being fully loaded from the earlier fighting. The ray of resonating force caused her to stagger back clutching her face with one hand and swinging against Kite with the other.

Even though the beam must have hurt, her noises were disturbingly like sounds of pleasure. Kite could not detect any such magical active abilities, but knew that those following this particular path often used alchemical pills and concoctions for such effects. A lot of them.

As she was unable to resummon her weapon, courtesy of Kite’s evolved dispelling effect, she instead seemed to go for the same kind of tactic Dragonfly often employed, albeit with many more disturbing connotations. Spreading her arms wide, she lunged at Kite in an attempt to grapple. And she was fast.

Not wanting to be caught in such an embrace, Kite managed to sidestep her first attack and deliver a crushing blow from his staff and void strike [Void-Sunders-Firmament] which left her hand badly mangled. She powered on, unperturbed even as Kite summoned his spear the jab at her legs in an attempt to keep her at bay. Leaping at him yet again, Kite reused his earliest solution against such a tactic.

“Wall!”

A wall of force sprang up in front of her, leaving her crashing face first into the hard surface although she handled it a lot better than the iron-ranked Dragonfly had. Instead of making one large wall, Kite divided it into several panes scattered over a small area, giving him some obstacles to weave through and making it harder for her to come at him in a straight line.

Ducking in behind one of the semi-translucent sheets of force, Kite whipped his staff up yet again to punish an arm reached around it in order to grab him. The chase resumed with the same counterattacks occurring from time to time, his opponent's hungry smile growing more frustrated for each failed attempt.

She declared that she’d had enough in a sudden shift of rhythm, a pair of metal horns growing from her forehead as she headbutted the force wall separating them both. Apparently, the special attack was made for just that; punching through walls and barriers. The pane of force shattered before Kite even could begin to reinforce it with his essence gift. Before he could raise another smaller barrier, she was upon him, attempting to bear him to the ground in a tackle.

The result was a bit awkward, as Kite was dragged down on the spot where he stood rather than being dragged a few meters by the force [Unyielding]. While she did find it hard to find purchase on him [Implacable motion], it was still enough to pin him with one arm and punch him twice in the face. Kite’s world flashed and his head rang with each hit, managing to mutter a semi-coherent “Ward” before the third blow could land. A barrier only ten centimeters across appeared in front of his face, the timing and size making it quite resilient as her knuckles broke upon it.

Now growling, she had apparently decided to use even more force as she leapt into the air above him only to come down again, elbow pointed downward like a descending battering ram. But this was something Kite had a solution to.

“Void!”

His gate appeared above him, the woman’s momentum carried her straight into it before it rejected her, and violently so [Gate of Nihility]. As he dismissed the dark circle and rose to his feet, she landed a few meters away. Her arm was half shredded to bloody strips, as were other parts of her body.

“Oh, I’ll enjoy taking all that and more back from your body, little pretty.” she said in a mix of growling and giggling before she started to grow, a berserking power activating to have her muscles swell and form mutate. Kite had seen it more than once, apparently a common result from the corrupt essence for those following this particular path.

But even as she was shifting, a throwing star was already flying through the air towards her, shimmering with dispelling force. As it impacted, her swelling muscles suddenly deflated all at once, her whole posture sagging with it as the debilitating after-effects were forced upon her.

“Wha-” was all she had time to slur before Kite had brought out his staff, empowering his spatial tears as his foe was suddenly struck by a ripple in the air which detonated into a huge, chaotic mess of tears in reality [Void-Sunders-Firmament, Potential of Stolen Power]. In her weakened state, she hadn’t even noticed the attack, and even her bronze-ranked body could not withstand it as chunks of her fell to the ground, followed by the main mass still held together by some bones here and there.

During the fight, glimpses of the rest of the fighting had indicated that it had continued to be intense but under control. Even as Dragonfly was sent flying by a punch from their foe, a gauntleted pugilist, Grim seemed to have deemed his task complete as glass shards were shot into the fray in the openings left by Dragonfly’s absence. One of the other bronze-ranked enemies was about to use some kind of leaping attack at a downed adventurer, only for a gust of wind to shift him to the side and crash into the ground instead. Walker had all but disassembled his opponent, the man also activating his berserking power for a last shot at victory. Kite brought those ambitions low with another strike of his staff, carried the ten or so meters to impact the man when he least expected it and end his boost.

As the rest of the fight was mostly a question of finishing the foregone conclusion, Kite got a moment to truly appreciate his training. While these opponents weren’t entirely without skill, it was more a style of enthusiasm rather than mastery, allowing him to dispatch a warrior of higher rank yet again.

“I better not get complacent. There are more enemies, and definitely more skilled, to fight in the future.” he muttered to himself, the words not quite succeeding to quench the small, warm core of pride at the achievement.

The circle destroyed, their group took a short moment to rest and assist their exhausted allies before continuing. Their result was a mixed blessing, as one of the ally iron-rankers did not survive, having died before Kite and his group entered the glade. But the other one did, and that had to count for something. While it had gone smoothly for the members of Kite’s group, they were all a bit battered and exhausted. At least a couple of restorative pills would help in that regard.

Off in the distance, a new silver-ranked battle seemed to have started, new waves of power radiating over the torn landscape. One that filled Kite with a vague sense of urgency. It felt important that he witnessed it.

“Lady, go back into your house. You are causing a scene.” guard sergeant Ire said, voice firming up as the apparently deranged woman didn’t seem to heed him, agitatedly waving a rolling pin around her where she paced in the small yard. He had a few of the younger recruits watching uncomfortably from behind, neither of them having their full set of essences and probably signing up as a guard in hopes of affording them one day. As he himself hadn’t managed it either should have told them of their prospects.

They had been on patrol in the area beneath the fourth spire of Gilded, a moderately affluent area, as a commotion had caused them to investigate. A woman had beaten her husband bloody on the inner yard of their apartment complex, still being agitated and aggressive even while he had been dragged away to safety by brave, helpful neighbors while leaving her to roam the communal area.

What concerned Ire was that there were others in the yard, not as helpful. The looks they gave the group of guards sent shivers down his spine even though he didn’t know why.

“The rest of you, do the same!” Ire shouted at them, standing straighter. “You are violating the peace and public order. Please return and-”

“Ahh, get off me!” was suddenly heard behind Ire, followed by a sharp, wet sound and a deeper thud.

Whirling around, sergeant Ire saw one of the younger guards staring at the body of a fallen young man, wooden spikes still growing out of the young guard’s hands and more lodged in the throat of the corpse at his feet.

“Heavens, Dice, what have you done?” Ire asked, glancing about to see the severe gazes of onlookers from the houses and doorways around. Many had seen it. Ire did not doubt that the boy had his reasons, but bringing out your powers too readily on normals often meant trouble in the long run .

And the trouble had already found them as the unsettling crowd in the yard of the apartment building had stilled, all gazes on the corpse. Then as one, they shouted in a discordant unison before charging at the trio of city guards.

“Retreat! Call for reinforcements!” Ire shouted, before muttering a spell.

“Bones of the earth, rise!”

A wall of packed earth rose from the ground to close the entrance to the yard, delaying the mob which had begun storming against them. Grabbing both of the younger ones by the pauldron of their armor, Ire shoved them into motion as they began running for the nearest guardhouse. Ire did not know what had flown into these people, but years of experience gave him a bad feeling about it. This would be trouble, that he was sure of.