NOVEL NEXT Chapter 58 - The Clash
I have many flowery words that I could use to describe what followed, but it would be folly to try to make sense of the chaos. Well, for me anyways. It seems our adventurer friends, and to a lesser extent Siegfried as well, thrived in the chaos.
Basically, as the frontline of my knights collided with the remaining skeletons, they were pushed back this time around as each of the constructs were being empowered by one of the necromancers individually. But not so much as to break the charge entirely which allowed the adventurer berserker and porthos who arrived right on time to land some blows on the newcomer. The radiance mage has taken to inhibit the adventurer mage’s efforts, effectively taking both of them out of the fight as hot beams of light clash against ice constructs and melt them.
The archer is pelting the cultists with accurate but mostly ineffective shots. It seems she does not have any skills that could increase her archery power either, otherwise she would probably have used them by now.
The leader is coordinating his squad and my knights most valiantly, adding his shield to the phalanx when required. His shouts and commands inspire the troops and I can feel an undercurrent of essence being carried along with his words that bolsters and invigorates them even as he focuses on interpreting the flow of the battle.
Juliette adds her own encouragements that similarly seem to have an empowering aspect to them, likely the result of her newest skill [Charming Voice], though not nearly as strong as the leaders. She darts in and out of the brawl, relying on agility and Allouette’s enhancements to her mobility to aid where she can before retaliation can come her way.
The other side has no chain of command in place, no communication, but what they have is raw power and rudimentary coordination. They know what each of them is capable of and try not to interfere with each other too much, mostly successfully.
Checking across the dungeon, their leader is still in a deadlock against Larissa. The golem is almost motionless, every movement seemingly draining the necromancer, but by its mere power and presence a threat that the rogue cannot ignore. Simultaneously, the leader needs to constantly be aware against Larissa’s seemingly unending arsenal of tricks, as she produces a large variety of items from a fold in space and employs them to obscure her location and attempt to launch an attack, only to be foiled by the golem moving rapidly to intercept and being forced to retreat.
Neither side has reinforcements to expect at this point in time, except perhaps Athea and the doppelgangers, but they might not be suited to the scrappy brawl in the hallway here.
The combat ebbs and flows through the hallway with no clear advantage being held by either side until a concentrated effort by the adventuring party brings down another of the skeletons, it’s foot slipping on a sheet of fresh ice that the mage somehow managed to slip by the radiance mage’s defenses. The unexpected nature of it caused the creature to topple over backwards immediately, and for some reason without explicit communication or commands both the leader and the berserker were ready for this to happen.
As they quickly demonstrate with a bash to its side followed by another swing of the axe that results in a red explosion of wrath and fury. While neither is a deadly blow, they manage to take out a pair of the creature's arms, leaving it defenseless and uncoordinated.
In exchange for their aggression, the radiance mage seems to have taken it upon himself to rectify his mistake however. A large amount of essence suddenly gathers and I can only assume it is the result of a skill as the man points a finger at the adventurer berserker, Astrid I believe, and unleashes a beam of blinding pure yellow from his fingertip, aimed right at her head.
She is in the motion of recovering from her swing and though it seems she detected the attack she is not fast enough to evade the incredibly fast and likely deadly beam of light about to impact her skull.
But she does not have to.
In a flash of light, Siegfried’s aegis manifests in front of her head, deflecting the beam of light harmlessly upwards where it burrows some 30 or 40 meters into the roof, melting the stonework instantly as it ascends beyond my perception, before the shield shatters.