Skybound

Morgan Mackenzie was having an exciting, albeit miserable, day. Although she had blacked out after hitting the barrier, it had only been for a moment or two, because she was still falling when she awoke. Also, screaming, because while she was immune to fire, she was not immune to the pain of having most of the feathers ripped out of her still-new wings. Or exploded out; she wasn't quite sure, but whichever the case, most of them were falling around her like burning black snowflakes. She felt as though she were moving in slow motion, which gave her plenty of time to see the crumbling building she was headed directly for. Then, as she tumbled, she saw the sky again, and burning feathers, and a blue wall encircling the city that was already rebuilding itself, as if insulted that a certain sorceress had within her the temerity to assault its form. 

At least I made it inside, she thought as she fell, still in a daze. With all her senses screaming at her so loudly they blended into a single noise, what rose to the top was the thought that this domed city was oddly, serenely beautiful.

At that moment, a sharp pain in her stomach brought everything back into focus and to normal speed. Such a sensation, in her current state, could only mean one thing: she had no mana remaining.

She had no mana remaining.

It was trying to tick back upwards, but between the damage to her wings, her shattered ribs, and – as evidenced by the fact that she couldn't feel anything below her stomach – her broken neck, every shred of mana was being ravenously consumed by her regeneration. When that wasn't enough, it turned on her physical body, consuming fat and muscle alike – starving her even as she healed.

Her mana had finally managed to climb back into the triple digits when she crashed through the wall of the building, breaking her wings and shoulder all over again. She hit the floor, skidding and rolling across the stonework, and fetched up against the far wall. She groaned, her [Pain Resistance] skill little comfort in the face of so much damage, compounded by her lack of mana. She struggled to a seated position, and as her magic and her body's reserves began to drain away to fuel another round of regeneration, she pulled on her storage runes.

She almost couldn't do it. The instant she began, the drain on her mana accelerated, sending a thrill of fear through her that nearly stopped her heart. Finally, just before she ran dry again, her monumental effort of will saw a vivid purple fruit materialize in an emaciated, skeletal hand as she collapsed against the rough stone.

The effort of pulling something so laden with mana exhausted her, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. A heavy, mechanical BRRRRRRRRRT, however, dragged her back to consciousness – a noise nobody from Earth could mistake as anything but a minigun. The noise told her that, at the very least, Dana was still in the fight. She couldn't afford to check out now.

As difficult as it was to pull the churple from her storage, that task was nothing compared to stopping at just one bite. The instant surge of mana let her put the rest back into her rune, and the regeneration let her body get back to work on repairing itself

She didn't let that stop her from licking the little dribbles of juice off her fingers, though.

==============

Biggleston Percival Worthmeyer the Third woke up dry heaving, blearily trying to suppress the urge to vomit as a shouting dwarf hauled him off the bench he didn't remember passing out on. He choked down his nausea, and his growing panic, with a supreme effort of will. Mana raged in the air outside, but it wasn't fueling an organized spell, or a ritual – it was just there, formless and chaotic. Whatever the barrier had been doing to lessen the amount of ambient mana in the air, it wasn't anymore; now, like water over a spillway, the magical energies of the wildlands were pouring in.

"I dinnae what that was, lad," snapped Kojeg, helping Biggles to his feet, "but it got the whole city riled up. Foz an' Kels can hold 'em off for a bit, but we need to move."

"Barrier-" stuttered the necromancer, groping for the offered waterskin as Wuffle made angry wurbles at being jostled in the pocket of his tunic. "Barrier's down; mana's building up, too. I'll be able to summon my familiars soon with the extra regen."

Kojeg turned away, hefting his hammer over his shoulder. Biggles dug his hand into another pocket, fishing out a vial of dark liquid, uncorking it and pouring its contents into his mouth. Good kaffen could wake a man up on a cold morning; great kaffen could raise the dead on a cold morning, and right now, that's about what Biggles needed. Letting out a sigh of relief as the fog left his mind, he returned the empty vial to his pocket as he took stock of his surroundings.

Explosions and surges of magic came from the distance, sharp and clear through the rushing storm of mana over the city. He could recognize the staccato cracks of Terisa wielding her weapon in its smaller form, punctuated by thumps and surges of familiar, vibrant magic and the unearthly sound of Dana making war. The singularly violent purple aura he felt, though, could belong to only one caster.

"It seems the sorceress is here as well, so we should make haste to assist."

"Plenty hard to miss that," said Miros, his shade half phasing through the wall. "Brought the whole dome down, although it's regrowing itself from the walls. I think everything in the city is heading for them right now. Foz only had to bust up a few smaller ones, and he's already headed that way. They're ignoring anything that doesn't actually try to stop them."

"Let us hurry, then," said Biggles, his own mana back up to almost half thanks to the ambient magic. The kaffen had soothed his nausea as well, leaving him eager to test his newest summon.

===========

Terisa took a few heaving breaths as the armored [Steelsong Sentinel] ceased its crawl towards her. Bursts of fire from Dana's spinning cannon of death absolutely devastated the smaller, less armored sentinel golems, but it was a waste of its limited ammunition to kill the big ones. For those, her own [Piercing Shot] was the better skill to use, even with Althenea in her smaller form. Using it with the rifle also "got the job done," as Dana had put it, but it also used a lot more mana and stamina.

They had seen the sorceress crash into a building less than a block away, and were rushing to provide backup. The shattered barrier had sent the golems into a frenzy, and even though it was rebuilding itself, the rush of mana had hit the city like a boot to an anthill. The golems had stopped what they were doing and attacked anything that moved, and then homed in on the noise of their weapons.

From the moment a footbridge in an overgrown garden district had crumbled underfoot, the only golems they had had to deal with were the ones who could directly perceive the running combat taking place. The majority of the Silent City continued its work undisturbed. The instant Morgan shattered the protective barrier, however, every golem in the city dropped what it was doing and converged. Most of them, small servitor golems, were so uncomplicated that they either didn't have levels at all, or were of such a low level that Terisa simply didn't receive kill notifications.

The big ones were different, however, and were much more of a hassle – even for a huntress pushing level eighty.

"We're almost there," huffed Dana as the still-spinning barrels of her cannon hissed in the cold air. "Got big movement on sensors, something coming up from below, off to the west of where she fell."

"She can't have any mana left after that. She shouldn't have even been able to DO that," said Terisa. "I've seen mages burn themselves to a crisp trying to channel a tenth of the mana I felt."

Their running dialogue was interrupted by an even bigger version of the sentinel golems bursting upwards through the street cobbles. Wordlessly, the huntress broke left, and Dana went right. Terisa didn't hesitate as the engineer's armored legs split at the seams, her shots splashing harmlessly against the glowing gemstone the golems used as an eye. It served as a distraction well enough, and the construct turned towards her instead of Dana, its stone hand glowing with grim red runes as it began to amass energy.

"SLAM round out!" shouted Dana, and Terisa dropped to the ground. The armor had to anchor itself into something solid in order to use that particular weapon, and it had a long recovery time, but unless the huntress had enough time to prepare her own [Skills], it was the most powerful offensive option they had.

They had come to rely on its sheer destructive power to such an extent that they were left speechless, frozen in place as a delicate, shimmering membrane appeared in front of the golem, deflecting the high-caliber projectile to punch through another building instead.

"SHIT!" Dana yelled, pushing herself out of the line of fire while leaving the tips of her armored legs embedded in the stone roadway. The worldwalker's foresight and sheer inventiveness still amazed Terisa as the golem's attack finished charging and left a puddle of molten rock where the engineer had just been. The runes on its arm began to glow again, charging another devastating attack.

Althenea shifted to rifle form with a thought, and Terisa gathered her mana. It wasn't enough to be a fully-powered [Celestial Shot], but they needed to bring the shield down as quickly as possible.

The golem turned towards her, Terisa raised the rifle–

–and a metal horse the size of a covered wagon, wreathed in lightning and blades, slammed into the golem.

=================

Biggles and the others followed a chaotic trail of melted, shattered, bashed and broken pieces of golems and city maintenance constructs. Usually a man of few words, Foz mostly just liked to cook and hunt; when it came down to it, though, a berserker class was really only considered good at one thing.

A seven foot tall half-Ursaran [Blood-Axe Berserker] was really good at that thing.

As a halfway-shifted half-Ursaran berserker, over nine feet tall and pushing half a ton of thickly-corded muscle, 'good' quickly became a rather spare word to describe Foz's capacity for carnage. Add to that the fact that his enchanted axes grew to match, and it was no surprise to find pieces of golems embedded halfway into the masonry to either side. Miros, meanwhile, dashed ahead, phasing through the rubble and guiding them around the worst of the melee. His abilities were better suited to scouting, as his shade-self could not inflict much damage on the machines.

Biggles and Kojeg rushed to keep pace. The necromancer was still low on stamina, even as his mana recovered, and he struggled to keep up, breaths turning to a repetitive wheeze. He could feel the eagerness of his new familiars as they laid their borrowed eyes on the enemies who had, long ago, felled their living forms. Even as he ran, the newly remade [Anima Curate] drew power to himself. No normal necromancer could have bound the spirit of one of the drakes from the Skyguard Legion, but they'd been willing, and the [Elder Chimaera] had provided the necessary life energy. Few understood the rules of the system as well as necromancers, no matter the flavor of their specific class, so Biggles was acutely aware of how lucky he had been that his bargain with the drakes had been judged worthy. His class had been remade, instead of his soul being crushed.

They rounded the last corner, and Kojeg dashed forward with an unintelligible shout, his hammer drawn over his shoulder. One of the smaller combat golems crumpled into itself under the combined power of the dwarf's [Skills] and the sheer mass of the enchanted tool.

Terisa, Dana, and something vaguely horse-shaped fought the biggest construct they had yet seen, while Foz kept several slightly smaller ones from flanking them. Biggles could sense, though, that time was running out. Greater numbers of larger golems were fast approaching, and it was time to see if his gamble with the shades had paid off. Kojeg cleared a space for him, shouting to the others that help was on the way.

He braced himself, drawing as deeply as he could on his magic. He could feel the spirits of the drakes within his own soul leap at the chance, invigorated by the currents of mana. Only one felt like it was moving, however; he knew it would take time, training, and leveling of [Skills] – along with actual levels in his new class – in order to summon more than one.

He held out his hand, his magic coalescing into a ball above his palm, then dripping down to trace a glowing silvery-green runic circle on the stones. "Anda'ra kenth anda thel drakkon," he said, the words coming unbidden from deep within his soul where the spirit-bond lay. "Let the Son of Drakenth come forth!"

The spell circle flashed, motes of silver and green coalescing into jagged obsidian bones like clay crumbling in reverse. First came the vertebrae, tracing a sinuous line in the air, joined at either end by a skeletal ribcage and pelvis. Its legs and arms came next, and as soon as the latter were formed, the birthing drake flexed its wicked claws, humming with ferocious power. Then, its wings, flaring to their full span and wreathed in the fell energies of the undead. Finally, the skull began to form itself out of crystalline obsidian and glimmering, silvery motes of magic. Horns flanked its dead eye sockets, which flared to life with shadowed flame as it settled its legs underneath it, rearing up and opening its maw as dagger-like teeth filled the empty void.

"SQUEEEEEAAK!" The diminutive drake looked very proud of itself.

It was only level one.

Biggles could see its status just like his own now that it was physically present, and realized he'd made a grave miscalculation.

"Is that it, lad?" Kojeg asked, sparing a glance over his shoulder.

An exasperated noise, almost a whine, built up in Biggles' throat."I didn't realize it'd be that small!" 

The subject of their discussion bounded over to the summoner, barely coming up to his knee, before darting past him to menace a smaller maintenance drone coming up from behind them. It hissed, and a tongue of black flame lanced out. Two heartbeats, then three, and the small skeletal form seemed exhausted. It had also partly slagged the lesser golem, what was left simply twitching and sparking as it tried to keep crawling forwards. A bolt of death magic from Biggles finished it, and several dim pulses of light surrounded the drakeling as he felt it level. As it did, it grew with the disturbing sound of crackling glass and stone.

"He won't stay that little very long," Kojeg remarked.

The near-continuous BRRRRT of Dana's gun was interrupted with a blast of angry red light, and the battered armor tumbled past them, still smoking. The helmet popped off with a hiss as she tried to roll over, blood running from her nose. The metal horse punished the golem for that attack, lightning bursting from its hooves and the bladed plates that covered it. The shield flickered, and a powerful shot from Terisa blew apart its arm.

To their dismay, that arm quickly began to reform, the golem hunkering behind a renewed energy barrier.

"I'm out, Kojeg," she said with a pant. "Got nothin' left but my suit's power core. We can prime it and run if somebody can carry me."

The dwarf grunted and tersely shook his head."We would nae get far enough, lass."

"We can't even break that thing's shield without that horse, and when damage gets through it just repairs itself."

"Aye, ye'll have to break its core. 'Tis a city killer from the legends; one of the worst enemies my people faced." The dwarf seemed sad and angry at the same time, turning to walk towards the machine. "Ta break the core, ye have ta hit it right when it fires that weapon, get past the shield, and fight it in close. The horse has the right of it."

"You can't tank a hit from that, Kojeg," replied Dana, the damaged parts of her armor popping loose as the rest reconfigured around her. Not enough armor plates remained to cover all of it, and runed gears and rods and enchanted mechanisms could be seen shifting almost as if alive where the gaps left it exposed. "Thing hits like super lightning with a side of magma; if I hadn't upgraded my suit…"

Without turning, the dwarf hefted his hammer. "Aye…I can't, no. But the line of Kadrass can,"

he answered, as the color seemed to leave his skin.

"What do you mean!?" Dana questioned with a shout as he turned to see Foz bounce off the golem's mana shield. Terisa saw this as well, her face turning to a look of horror as Kojeg's skin turned silvery white, followed by his beard, and finally his clothes.

"Kojeg, NO!" shouted the huntress, but she was too late.

"[Adamant Birthright]!" Kojeg shouted. 

Some [Skills] seemed to work better when spoken; others seemed to require it, especially bloodline skills. Biggles, with his class so tied to the tending and care of souls, could see the truth of the magic in the skill Kojeg just invoked. The dwarf was literally becoming metal, his soul losing connection to the flesh.

"I AM KOJEG!" he bellowed, voice suddenly booming like a thunderclap. "SON OF KADRA, SON OF DRASS!"

He moved then, metal body shining to match the power glowing in his hammer. The giant golem discharged a blast of red lightning; it struck the dwarf, but he merely began to glow with heat. Then, he bore down on the golem even faster. His hammer spoke for him, popping the shield like a soap bubble, then shattering one of its legs. He drove it back into the building behind it, hammering it into the ground. The construct's shield kept trying to reform, but the magic simply fizzled and failed where it touched the silvery dwarf. 

When the golem lost its footing on the rubble and swayed to the side, Kojeg struck with a mighty overhead swing and an equally mighty shout. The hammer glowed with the red light of the forge, and took half of the golem's shoulder with it as it cratered into the street. The backswing proved to be too much for what remained of the tortured metal, and the weaponized arm separated from the body to land over forty paces away. Emboldened, the dwarf continued his relentless assault, [Double Strike] and his raw strength letting him hit the construct's armor like an industrial power hammer.

With Foz and Terisa keeping the lesser enemies at bay, victory seemed just within reach. Then, disaster struck. Just as the armored torso cracked and split to reveal the light emanating from its glowing core, its remaining arm crackled with a surge of energy and exploded, knocking dwarf and golem flying in opposite directions. Kojeg tumbled across the street, his mostly metal body now too heavy to be thrown very far. However, the golem landed only a few paces from its severed arm.

With the golem now within range, the arm slid and scooted across the ground, motivated by the magical energy field surrounding the monster. Rods and gears knocked loose by Kojeg's vicious assault flew through the air, rejoining the mass and reconnecting the severed limb. It turned towards where Kojeg was already back to his feet, hammer glowing with silvery power. The partially reconstructed arm pointed, runes glowing as mana surged in the air. 

Then, suddenly, it paused, as though paralyzed by sudden indecision.

The ambient mana, which had leveled off as the barrier re-established itself, began to rise once again. And then it started moving like a living thing, pushed and pulled in multiple directions nearly at the same time. Biggles had to stifle another retch, the air almost as thick with magic as the valley had been when the shades had risen. Dana clutched her head, her armor still trying to reconfigure itself after losing so many pieces. Suddenly, an impossibly loud voice broke across the clamor.

"BURN!"

The shout was accompanied by a spray of partially-melted lesser golems, blasted from a side street near the caved-in building Terisa had been trying to reach. Close in their wake followed an almost unrecognizable form, angry and emaciated and naked, dragging broken wings trailing burning feathers. Her gait was clumsy and plodding, her will anything but.

The mana roiled around the woman, even as her bones gave off cracks and grinding pops the necromancer could hear from over thirty paces away. The woman grimaced as her wings straightened back into place, new feathers slowly beginning to regrow. She reached out a hand towards where Foz and Terisa still fought, and the dozens of metal forms surrounding the pair were instantly engulfed in flames that twisted as if alive. Then the flames went inside, through the gaps in the armored shells, and molten metal began to pour out like blood from countless wounds as the forms slumped to the ground.

Even the giant guardian seemed unsure what to make of this new intruder, but Kojeg never lost his focus. As the sorceress turned her gaze to the construct, the dwarf charged.

===================

Morgan was having trouble focusing. Even just the one bite from the fruit was intense, the buzzing high leaving her feeling like a hyperactive drunk. Only, it wasn't the world wobbling, it was the magic. She was higher-level now than when she had first mistakenly partaken of a whole fruit, but it was still hitting her with waves of ecstasy and burning pain. It was having the desired effect, though; the influx of mana let her repair her body and heal her wounds while replenishing her mana. With her [Skills], and good old fashioned skill from experience, it was easier to push the excess mana out instead of letting it wreak havoc on her body as she made her way towards her friends.

She was just in time, it seemed. Dana's armor was missing pieces; a lot of pieces. More pieces than she'd ever seen it in. Foz, in his shifted form, was almost incomprehensibly big. She only now realized she'd never seen him fight before. Everything moved in slow motion to her eyes, interspersed with short disjointed bursts as her perceptions kept misfiring. It looked to her like Kojeg was now made of metal. And there was a very large, heavily armored golem pointing its arm at her while it gathered a significant amount of mana in the glowing runes formed on and around its hand.

A ball of fiery lightning blasted from the runes, and Morgan cocked her head to the side in confusion as it hit her just before the dwarf slammed into the machine once again. The fire died away, and she stood there unscathed.

"...Fire?" she asked out loud, confused as to why anyone would use fire against her. But then her feet slipped on the molten stone around her, and she realized how much of a danger the golem was to her friends.

She struggled to bring everything back into focus, her brain still buzzing from the fruit. She was able to walk forward without stumbling too much, and threw a few small orbs of [Mana Bolt] at the thing when Kojeg stepped to the side and gave her a clear shot. She needed to get closer before she really opened up or she'd hit the dwarf, too, and she had no idea how much damage he could take. By the time she'd gotten within twenty feet of the enemy, it had charged up enough magic to fire again. It aimed at Kojeg this time, kicking him backwards to make room to fire. 

Morgan reached out, calling to it before it could hit him. The lightning tingled – her resistance to it wasn't quite as high as to fire – but it faded away just as before, with no lasting damage.

"Ye'll have ta smash the core!" yelled Kojeg, darting in again to strike where the self-repairing armor was still damaged. "I'll give ye a shot, just don't let it reform!"

He suited actions to words, flaring brightly as he activated multiple [Skills] before crashing into the golem like a freight train. He drove it to the ground again, and his hammer blurred as it struck the armored chest plate dozens of times a second. Morgan used [Furl] as soon as her wings were finished healing, putting them out of the way so she could dash forward as the armor finally gave way to reveal a glittering red gemstone set in a wire frame. She wreathed her hands in flame as Kojeg stepped back, gasping – whether from exertion or shock, Morgan didn't know.

She plunged her hands into the golem's chest even as the metal started to groan and bend to reform itself, and forced it asunder with her will.

"My fire's hotter than yours," she told it, almost calmly.

And then she proved it, filling the golem and the space around it with more and more mana, more and more fire, as the burning magical fruit continued to fill her reserves. She was heedless of the fact that the golem's movements had weakened dramatically; heedless of the fact that the air warped around her, rent apart by her flames; and heedless of the fact that she had begun to scream, venting audible rage into the golem that dared.

It wasn't the fact that the golem quit moving entirely that stopped her, but rather the DING! of a level-up notification intruding on her consciousness, as well as the message it bore.

She stumbled back, suddenly unsteady, as the mana in the air seemed to freeze solid. The lesser golems had all stopped when the large one ceased functioning, and the silence hung over the street like a tangible thing.

"Uh, guys?" she asked, swaying back and forth on her feet. "What’s a… 'milestone class evolution'?"

Then she fell back, as darkness rose up to claim her.