Symbiotic Ascension : A Progression Fantasy Adventure

Before Glenn and Sahro went off to search for Lucian, Milena and Liara.

"How are you doing, Whitey?"

Whitney hissed out a happy yelp, its feathers trembling softly. Liara smiled as she caressed the neck of her feathery mount.

"Alright. I've been convinced. I need my own mount," Lucian declared from behind her. He was sitting right behind Milena, his arms stubbornly crossed over his chest. Milena was stealing glances at the Prince from time to time, worried that he would slip from the griffin's back. A baseless worry, considering they were all capable of flight by themselves. But then, Lucian was the Prince of Munirp. Milena, as a Duchess, probably couldn't help it.

"What kind?" Milena asked curiously. "There aren't that many creatures willing to be ridden, are there?"

Lucian rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well, in the ages past, when magic wasn't as common and Shards didn't exist, people rode horses. I'm sure I can add some wings to a horse. That'd be cool!"

Liara shook her head silently. A winged horse? What sort of abomination was that?

Milena sighed heavily. "I once made a friend in these dunes. A cute creature, a mix between a snake and a scorpion. We called them Snakion."

Liara nodded. She remembered these creatures. Calling them cute may be too much, though. They were massive beasts, after all, more than capable of swallowing any of them whole—not that it would have done the monsters much good. Even back then, every one of them was more than capable of ripping their way out through the creatures' beasts. Fortunately, that didn't need to happen.

"Oh, I know these things! I believe Sir Solialok first identified them four hundred years ago, they're called—"

"They're called Snakions," snapped Milena. The Prince, who was excited to share his knowledge, leaned back in disappointment.

"You know, I'm not used to being interrupted while I'm talking," he said. "Usually, I'm the one who cuts people off. That's why I like to hang out with you guys, I can somewhat live normally, even though I'm still the Prince." Lucian grinned from one ear to the other.

Liara turned and smiled politely. "We're happy to have you with us, too, Lucian."

The Prince giggled merrily, satisfied. Milena opened her Observer, grimacing. "We shouldn't be too far from the target tower. Just a few more, and we'll be completely done. Looks like Glenn and Sahro are almost finished, too."

Liara glanced at the map and frowned. "How is it that we still can't figure out where the Mana roads lead to? With almost every road mapped out, we should have at least some sort of idea!"

Lucian shrugged. "Perhaps it is something that needs to be whole to be understood. Like a puzzle."

"A puzzle spanning an entire desert..." Milena sighed. "It feels like we're dawning on something incredibly important once again. Let's hope the River of Life is indeed at the end of this adventure."

"We will end this war single-handedly," nodded Liara, her expression hardening. "And we'll find out the truth about Miyāh al-Ḥayāh."

Milena patted her back encouragingly, before returning to her studies of the Observer's map. She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "What is this?"

The map was glitching out slightly, the digital markers for locations and troops freezing or appearing and disappearing.

Lucian stood on Whitey's back, alert. "Something is jamming up the Observer. This shouldn't be possible. Liara, tell Whitey to fly as high as he can."

Liara nodded and silently conveyed the order to the mount. Whitey soared through the sky, piercing the clouds and rising above them. The sun was beating hard on them, and there was no trace of the enemy. Only the illusory shimmering in the air from the heat of the desert and the silent wind running down the black dunes.

"This is weird..." the Prince muttered, "There should be something, anything..."

Boom!

An explosion in the distance made their ears ring. Black sand rose in the air from the shockwave, and Whitey even swerved to the side slightly, surprised.

"What the hell was that?" Milena blurted out, her eyes wide open. A line of dark-green energy suddenly shot past them and into the sky, narrowly missing the group. Lucian cursed and jumped off Whitey, a crown of magic appearing on top of his head.

"Brace yourselves!" He screamed as he conjured his spell.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Countless explosions echoed in the distance, just like the one that preceded that dark-green projectile. Lucian's shield crackled as a spear covered in dark-green Aura crashed against it, exploding into bone shrapnel. A dozen projectiles followed that first spear, thundering down on Lucian's defenses. Liara and Milena quickly came to help him, but the explosions kept on ringing.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

"We can't stay on the defensive!" Milena yelled. "We need to get out of here!"

Lucian was all too willing to follow that suggestion, but it was quite complicated to run away when a rain of devastating, Aura-charged spears was battering down on him. Milena took a deep inspiration and suddenly slammed her hands together, her eyes shining slightly with a pale hue, a hue similar to moonlight.

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"Dela Luna's Repository." Mana flowed out of her powerfully. "Second Moon: Mirror!" Pale light covered the group before flickering and transforming into multiple mirror copies of the team. Even Whitey had been reproduced. The copies all flew in different directions, some retreating, others heading in the direction from which the attacks had come. The spears stopped falling on Lucian's shield, instead following the other copies.

"Great job!" Lucian screamed as he darted forward. "Let's use that occasion to go on the offensive!"

Whitey shrieked and threw them all on his back before shooting forward like a meteorite. Liara pressed her body against the bird's, clenching the feathers while holding her breath. She knew Whitey could go as fast as Glenn's nonsensical flying spell, but she rarely asked him to go that far. Milena's arms were tightly clasped on her waist. The Black Heiress glanced back at Lucian, her eyebrows twitching as she watched the Prince stubbornly hold himself, just using his legs, his arms crossed in front of him.

"I'm a gentleman, Liara," he shouted over the wind, his mouth deformed from the speed. "A gentleman!"

The Black Heiress shook her head and kept her focus forward. Milena's copies were getting destroyed with every second, but if her calculations were correct, they'd reach the attackers before they ran out of fakes. Bursts of dark green light pierced through the sky and tried to shoot them down, but Whitey was too fast for the projectiles. He spun out of reach, narrowly dodging each spear.

Crackle!

An island of mossy rocks suddenly appeared with a sizzle, the shimmering air breaking.

Milena cursed. "It was an illusion! That's why we couldn't see anything!"

"An illusion that even I can't detect?" Lucian's crown shimmered with twilight, a smirk drawn up on his lips. "My, my, they dare hide something from me, the Prince of Munirp?"

He jumped off the griffin's back, falling straight onto the island. Milena and Liara could now see who had been shooting the spears at them until now. Rows and rows of ballistas were set on the island's ledges, manned by countless Orcs. Individually, they didn't seem too powerful, but when they fired the ballistas, their might was comparable to that of a weaker Saint.

Lucian shouted something inaudible over the spear barrage, and a giant sword suddenly appeared above the island, falling straight down on it. An Orc jumped out and blocked the attack, barely destroying the spell. It cost him an arm and a leg, though. The Orcs roared victoriously as the last particle of Mana disappeared. That was until a second giant sword was conjured above the island.

Strangely, the Orcs weren't roaring this time. Some even began to tremble when the one sword turned to two, then three, multiplying with every passing second. Liara glanced at Milena, whose forehead was covered in sweat. Her illusion, reality-manipulating spells were more impressive than ever.

In one synchronized movement, the swords all fell down on the island, a devastating rain of steel. Right when the blades were about to touch the ground, they disappeared, shattered. The Mana sparked out helplessly as someone rose in the air to meet them. A human, or so Liara guessed. Their body was hidden underneath a thick beige cape, and a lacquered, wooden bird mask covered their face.

"Invaders? So deep?" He had a male voice with a high tone, sounding a little annoyed. "Why couldn't they go after that monkey, Marcus? I'm sure he would have loved a little exercise..."

Liara felt the sweat drench her back. All of her senses were screaming at her to run away. She glanced at Milena and Lucian, and the expression on their faces told her more than enough. They knew.

They knew that the masked man was a Newborn Ruler.

"You guys know about McDonald's? Sprite? Dr. Pepper?" The masked man quickly asked before flicking his finger, the desert trembling at the movement. "No, of course you don't. Okay, it was a pleasure, bye."

The black dunes suddenly surged up in massive geysers, swallowing the three of them like gigantic sandworms. Liara dodged away, powering herself up with Aura.

'What can I do? He's a Newborn Ruler mage. Could I actually hurt him? Maybe I can create an opening for Lucian?'

Two glowing wings of light bloomed out of her back, powering her up with that mysterious energy she still couldn't entirely control. Sahro called it Primal Aura, but that thing she could barely use wasn't like that. It did not feel Primal, no, it was different...

A glance to the side assured her that Milena and Lucian had successfully evaded the sand geysers, but new eruptions engulfed them. Lucian conjured some sort of equally enormous wave of shadows that pushed against the black sand, struggling to stop the eruptions.

'There's no time to think about this.' Liara drew a short breath and threw herself forward. Dunes exploded, attempting to bury her, but her wings conferred her a speed greater than the attacks. Bird-Mask clicked his tongue and let a little bit more of his Mana seep out. Black sand rose into a castle-sized wave heading straight for Liara.

Shriek!

Whitey charged straight for the sand wave, piercing a hole through it. Liara mentally thanked her companion and shot through the hole, a sword in one hand and a spear in the other. Her target was just behind the wave of sand, his expression unreadable beneath his mask.

Chains of moonlight surged out of the ground and restrained him, while Lucian conjured another of his gigantic swords.

Bird-Mask sighed. "I should never have taken this job..." He joined his hands together and exhaled heavily. Liara's blades flashed white as they came for his neck, Lucian's spell falling to claim his life.

"Burst," muttered Bird-Mask. Lucian's spell froze inches from the Newborn Ruler's head. Liara's sword and spear were in the same situation, pushing yet failing to reach the skin beneath the cape. The black dunes were strangely void of sound, an unbearable silence crushing them down. A heartbeat passed. Milena's conjured chains shattered into thousands of pieces while Liara and Lucian were sent flinging away, shrapnels of hardened sand lacerating through their skin.

"Break." Bird-Mask's voice commanded the Mana like an order, leaving no space for negotiations. If he wanted the world to break, then the world needed to obey. A giant chasm opened beneath Liara, Milena, and Lucian's feet, whistling with a deathly note.

"Fall." With that last command, Bird Mask sent them hurtling down the chasm.

"NOT ON MY WATCH!" Lucian thundered, his crown exploding with magenta light. Their fall was slowed to a standstill, before slowly resuming to their previous positions. The sand that had risen into the air or fallen into the chasm returned where it first was, and the chasm closed down. Lucian clenched his chest, heaving with difficulty.

Bird-Mask stared at him for a moment. "Oh. Anyway. Bre—"

Fwip!

A trail of pale Mana shot through the air, similar to Milena's moonlight. It was slow, incredibly easy to see, and yet Bird-Mask only watched as the arrow struck straight into his forehead, shattering his mask.

"That... was uncalled for," Bird-Mask muttered as he pressed his fingers to his forehead, finding blood. He glanced up to find his attacker, but he couldn't find anything. Similarly, the team of three and their gigantic bird were gone.

Bird-Mask sighed and flicked his fingers. His shattered mask became whole again before sticking back on his face.

"Marcus isn't going to be happy about this..." He shook his head and calmly walked back toward the Orc island nestled in the dunes. "Oh well. He can try admonishing me. I'm still his superior, after all."

The island soared into the sky at a thought. "Too bad. I liked this spot."

An hour later, there was not a trace left of the island, or even of the fight that had taken place.

Only black sand running farther than the eye could see.