Unchosen Champion

A thick sheet of illuminated mana slammed into the ground, embedding itself firmly in the soil like a road block. The barrier formed a bullet-proof shield in the nick of time, absorbing a dozen piercing shots from the firing squad of Elite Spite Constructs as they sent another volley into the desperate human defenders downrange from their position.

The deadly projectiles bounced off the glowing plate, ricocheting into the soft dirt with dinging reverberations, failing to reach their targets. Dirt sprayed in all directions, both from the shield implanting itself in the ground and the bullets colliding with dirt, adding to the chaotic atmosphere.

“Get your ass up!” Platinum shouted over the cacophony, wincing as she noted how many solidlights she had already expended. Even under the best conditions, she was in trouble, and the conditions of the Underlayer were anything but the best.

The last of the soldiers she had saved snatched his singed cowboy hat from the dirt as he struggled to his feet, falling back with relief, chasing the rest of his squad and getting lost in the crowd, as Platinum’s shield absorbed a series of attacks that would have killed him. He correctly recognized that he was one of the lucky ones.

An angry shout drew her attention to the side, where a red-headed man crunched the firmly held shield of an Elite Ruin Construct with a leaping one-handed smash of his black-jack. He injured the monster, causing it to drop its guard, but his opposite shoulder was punctured by the spear arm of his mechanical target. The monster flailed as it stumbled backwards, barely counter attacking, but still finding enough strength to cause the spike to erupt out of the man’s upper back and leave him gasping in shock with his free hand weakly gripping the shaft, dragging them both down to the ground.

Next to him, further away, an elegant woman jabbed a parasol forward, piercing the glowing weak point in a dual-wielding Bane Construct with the sharpened tip. Then she activated the cap, causing the mechanism to spring out and slice the torso of the monster into several pieces. The ribs of the umbrella were even more dangerous than the pointed end. She scowled from behind fashionably curled bangs as she braced herself for the counter attacks.

The canvas panels of the umbrella vibrated as they caught a bolt of mana from one of the casters in the backline of Primal Constructs, but the protection held long enough for her to step to the side and allow another burly warrior to step forward, wearing suspenders while holding a comically small round wooden shield that absorbed a second magical attack. The big, bearded man thrust a wand forward, held in his hand opposite the sparkling shield, sending the exact bolt of mana back at its caster. The alien caster had its exoskeleton melted, leaving its body as nothing more than a smoking husk.

At the same time, another man rose up from one knee where he had been battered into the dirt by the first shield-wielding Elite. His face was covered in blood from a wound above his hairline, but his eyes were clear enough. He raised his arm over his shoulder and a blade shimmered to life. The energized meat cleaver sliced the kneeling Construct in half, cutting from the shoulder that terminated in a spear to the opposite hip and gouging the dirt, causing the impaled red-headed man to fall the rest of the way into the dirt . They both leveled with the kill.

Before the spotlights diminished the butcher grabbed the shirt of the black-jack wielder and dragged him backwards, making room for others to push forward. “Mickey, you dumb bastard.” She heard the bloodied man mutter as he stumbled away while the more severely injured party shouted curses.

Arrows and other small projectiles shot across the sky with a steady cadence, landing deep in the sea of Primal Constructs, chased by larger arcing stone boulders, bolts of living wood, and winged missiles. A blue meteor briefly lit the battlefield directly above Platinum’s position, slowly traveling across the underground sky, before landing among the invaders with a muffled thump. It exploded against an urgently erected series of mana shields, splashing a cascade of bright blue flames that ignited dozens of the invaders beyond the edges of the protective barrier. They flailed, crashing into each other before collapsing beneath still burning fires, spreading the flames across a swath of invaders.

It hardly made a difference. Their opponents were innumerable. Platinum avoided contemplating beyond the next five minutes, too skeptical of their long term chances to expend the energy.

The Primal Constructs responded to the ranged volleys with their own arcing bolts of mana, all along their battle lines. Unlike the aliens, who used the same exact shields every time, the humans utilized countless alternatives. Flak missiles exploded in the air, popping the bolts of energy and raining ash upon the battlefield, then others ducked behind manifestations of Czech hedgehogs, dragon’s teeth, summoned earthen walls, and personally held armored shields, decorated with spikes and aggressive slogans, taking cover from the ranged attacks that reached the ground through the counter spells.

People charged into the organized lines of their enemies, having various amounts of success before being repelled with their own casualties. Volunteer medics desperately worked despite the Primal Constructs lack of respect for the red crosses emblazoned on armbands or scrap helmets while others dragged their compatriots out of the lines of fire. Thankfully, with the help of mana, even the worst, seemingly fatal wounds were recoverable.

Further down the line, probably a hundred yards from Platinum, she caught the sight of one of the scorpion-shaped Field Bosses leaping into the air above the battle, somersaulting, before slamming straight down into the ground as if propelled, causing the earth to quake. Primal Constructs and humans alike were launched into the air where it landed, ejected by the force, and those far enough away from the bodyslam to avoid the physical wave, but still too close, were struck by a blast of rolling mana as the creature called Felrog rampaged.

The Elite Primal Constructs were a significant challenge to the individual fighters, but they weren’t completely unmanageable. Scrappy combatants could take down the higher leveled Elites, fighting dirty or swarming the metallic aliens as they isolated them from their parties. The real problem was the presence of so many raid bosses. Field Bosses required too much attention in the disorder of a Middle-Ages style battle, like dragons wreaking havoc among peasants.

An orange spike, ringed with a series of electric yellow halos appeared from above Felrog with a snap and stabbed down, pinning the monster into the dirt like a stake anchoring a tent. Platinum recognized the attack as one from Sofia Alvarez, and sure enough, as Felrog struggled to escape the energy piledriver, flailing its arachnoid metal legs in the air and scraping gouges into the dirt, Gabriela Alvarez leapt through the air, barely dodging the panicked claws before crushing its face with her bat. The spike exploded afterwards, shredding the armored exoskeleton of the raid boss while a shield of blood magic protected the Street Sweeper from the shrapnel.

“Thank god.” Platinum whispered, watching the dismembered metal scorpion tail as it careened across the battlefield before crashing into more Constructs. She was happy that someone had finally taken care of another Field Boss. The humans didn’t lack their own powerhouses, though the actual scale of the battle made it hard to demonstrate their influence.

On the opposite side of her fading shield, one of the block leaders from Harlem held both hands behind his lower back while he chained kicks that snapped in the air and folded his targets. He slid forward, practically gliding across the dirt, pressing almost as deep into the enemy lines as Platinum had. He used a rising knee to free his dual-wielding opponent from the grip of gravity before spinning his body into a high back heel that shot the metal enemy backwards, dragging a dozen more aliens with it.

As the block leader calmly stepped forward, metal spikes, decorated with barbed wire emerged from the ground, protecting his flanks. They held the Elites back until another Field Boss crashed through. One of the block leader’s allies, a powerhouse from Manhattan, used some kind of sonic attack that stunned the massive opponent before a series of shattering kicks forced the monster to stumble backwards, back into the sea of Constructs.

The small surge in the battle lines halted when the kick fighter was forced to leap backwards, barely avoiding one of the glowing white energy volleys from the fiercest of their opponents. It loomed in the back, secure in its strength, surrounded by what seemed like more than a million alien soldiers.

The forces of Neon Park and its allies had entered the Underlayer after rushing through a long series of natural caverns, climbing down into the darkness by creating makeshift staircases the way school children would have organized a treefort. When they finally reached the empty dirt plains of the underground, they moved south. Only a few miles from their underground entrance a massive force of Primal Constructs awaited them, surrounding a single metal fortress, in the middle of nowhere.

What came next was obvious. It was war. They were still engaging with that stronghold of Primal Constructs, but it was ugly. Platinum was shaken, feeling like she was participating in D-Day. People were bloodied, injured, and dying in the dirt all around her, and it was only the first collision between massive armies. Whatever limited achievements they had were erased by the sheer scale of battle.

The conflict was positively medieval, with a jagged battleline forming the way a weak wave slid onto a beach, contouring to subtle differences in geometry as individual abilities found varying levels of success. Platinum had personally pushed the furthest, desperate to reach the most dangerous enemy, but even though she wasn’t responsible for anyone but herself, she couldn’t just ignore her allies, so she planted her feet and killed the monsters she could reach, using a solidlight like a glowing sword.

Another wave of scattershot projectiles flew into the Primal Constructs, detonating into orange fireworks, and sending sparks clattering against their metal forms ahead of her. The Constructs countered with haphazard bolts that flew deep into the crowds at her back.

“I’m ready!” Neon finally shouted to Platinum from where he had been preparing his own attacks. She immediately depleted the rest of her stock of abilities, leaving nothing in reserve in the hope that they could topple the anchor of the opposing army, though they hadn’t closed the gap nearly enough.

She sent three projectiles into the sky, setting up her partner’s offensive abilities in what they assumed was the speed of light. Solidlights collided in the air, slamming into each other as they formed precise shapes from streaking illuminations. The two elongated tetrahedrons, one arcing to the left and the other to the right, were simple enough, only requiring her to slam four solidlights together each, forming the pointed pyramids before leaving them to gravity.

She clenched her fists as the last piece, a small sphere of solidlights smashed together, high above them, arcing in the general direction of their primary target. Platinum could only give it as many faces as she had solidlights remaining, and she supplied every single one she had left, catching rays of perfectly white light, for their ultimate attack. It was essentially a disco ball, the final evolution of their experimentation with filtering Neon’s energetic attacks with her solidlights.

Neon’s nose was already bleeding, his skin humming with chemical energy as his power reached its apex. He adjusted his glasses with his middle finger, causing them to reflect a candy red color, before he shot forward in a flash, leaving footprints that glowed with radiation.

He blasted deeper into the Primal Construct army, turning himself into the weakest of lasers while chasing her solidlights from the ground, leaving a gap where a hundred of the aliens had disintegrated in his path.

An instant afterwards,she heard the clap that initiated Neon’s ranged attacks as he got into position, causing a chain reaction in his energy that sent a blastwave in all directions, extending into the air. The two tetrahedron formations were supplemented with a fluorescent light that burned her retinas to watch, as the edge of the wave approached.

The air hissed before it struck the solidlights, and for a moment, it seemed like the energy would be contained within the pyramids, but the light bounced within them, escalating as they shimmered in the air. Then, a pair of violet lasers blasted out from the point of each, striking the disco ball with a short burst of energy, before a rainbow of colors scattered past.

The ball glittered, almost as if it was actually meant to be decorative, before each facet of the solidlight container emitted a matching burst of light, sending streaking lasers across the Constructs, annihilating all that it touched before the bulk of the attacks collided with the Prime Construct.

The Prime Construct Siege Boss manifestation, Alpha VII, raked the army of human defenders with one final superheated blast of mana. A thousand defensive shields exploded into existence, saved specifically for such a purpose, half of which melted beneath the pressure, and a wall of smoke climbed along its mile long path until the Siege Boss lost its balance, still emitting its beam of energy. The beam streaked across the dirt landscape, carving a line into the distant Underlayer wall before it disappeared among the clouds held by the ceiling in the sky.

An explosion of colorful streaks shredded the titanic enemy, causing it to stumble and fall backwards. It had believed itself safe behind its army, as the humans struggled to make progress through the sea of robots, but it had underestimated the coordinated attacks of its opponents. Its final collision with the ground extinguished thousands of Primal Constructs and sent a wave of dirt in all directions.

The humans of Neon Park and its subordinate settlements raised their weapons in the air and charged into the falling dirt, emboldened by the stumbling collapse of the most oppressive enemy. They skipped ahead, smashing Elite Primal Constructs with chains, pipes, and brass knuckles as they shouted to finish it off in more expletive laced ways.

The tide of the first battle had barely shifted in their favor, but they weren’t winning yet.

Platinum charged forward right alongside the rest of the screeching lunatics as they dove into melee combat with the momentarily disoriented aliens. She met less resistance than most, able to follow the path Neon had used to force their attack into range, but she still chopped her way through the limbs of several Elite Primal Constructs that sought to obstruct her, using her solidlight sword while it lasted.

When she reached the Champion of Neon Park, he was kneeling by himself in a clearing of completely smooth substrate that crackled with orange flashes. The dirt was decorated with the severed ankles of a dozen Constructs, caught where he had expelled the built up energy from his body. She didn’t hesitate before reaching under his arm and dragging him back to his feet without a word. He needed to be protected.

“Told you we didn’t need to wait until we pushed closer.” Neon declared, already celebrating despite being virtually surrounded by enemies, and hanging limply from Platinum’s arm.

Platinum raised an eyebrow, barely stopping herself from dropping him back into the dirt to argue with both hands. “Oh really? What if you missed? What if we couldn’t catch up?” She pointed at the enormous foot of the Siege Boss with her opposite hand, as it slid backwards directly away from them, digging a trench in the ground as it went, shifting its weight backwards. “It isn’t even dead!”

The Siege Boss was struggling to sit up, but the fighters from Neon Park were already catching up, sending an inconsistent spray of ranged attacks as they desperately sought to finish it off while cutting down the Elites that blocked the way. The entire human army, millions strong, was converging on the vulnerable enemy.

Neon just laughed as one final burst of energy shot straight down from within the vaporous clouds above them, as high as the ceiling of the Underlayer, painting the entire region with a gentle violet haze. Platinum’s solidlight sphere faded after reflecting one final attack that had been agitated by countless reverberations inside the geometric formation. The high-powered strike pierced straight through the Prime Construct, from above, vaporizing its entire upper torso, along with its head, and all but two of its glowing weak points.

The human defenders that had surged forward to help, hungry for the opportunity to take a piece of the titanic enemy, barely had the opportunity to tag it with a few attacks, but they all leveled together.