NOVEL NEXT Chapter 31 - Invasion
"Any word from Adeline?" Allana asked, for the fifth time in the last hour. She slumped in her chair, crossing her arms.
Olivia shook her head, casting a quick look around the fairly quiet common room of the inn. It was still early, though noon and its lunch crowds were slowly approaching. "She's been stuck in assembly with the High Court all day. Apparently Gerrot is unwilling to accept even Allid's testimony–he's trying to force the issue."
"Crossing politics," Allana grumbled. She looked down at her half-finished bowl of oats, frowning intensely at it.
When she spoke again, her voice was unexpectedly quiet, smaller and more fearful than he had ever heard from the outspoken rogue before. "Do you think they're okay?" she asked.
Olivia didn't need the rogue to clarify who she meant. Their friends had been gone for only a few hours short of a full day, with no word from either Cadence or Tenebres.
"They're both mythic gifted," Olivia tried to reassure her. "If anyone could survive whatever happened to them, it would be those two."
"Cadence, maybe," Allana admitted, "but we've seen them fail before. And Tenebres's invocations leave him so drained. If he had to bring out one of his big fiends…"
"They still have Dillen with him, at least. He's a solid healer."
"We assume they do," Allana said. "We still don't know what happened to them–all three of them could've gotten separated from each other, too!"
Olivia sighed, unable to refute Allana's logic–especially as the same thoughts had occurred to her during their long, restless night.
"We just have to trust them," Olivia said. "We can't do anything else right–and normally, you'd be the first to remind the rest of us of that."
Allana frowned harder, and she absently stabbed her spoon into her increasingly mushy oats.
In the distance, several bells began to toll, their slow, repeated clanging proclaiming it to finally be noon.
Olivia sighed again and stood up, finally giving up on the breakfast they had both been picking at for hours. "C'mon," she said. "The least we can do is go wait in Adeline's chambers or something."
Allana drew a long breath, then nodded, getting to her feet as well. She threw a wave at the Wandering Fool's barkeep, signalling that they were done with their table, and turned towards the door.
Trying to draw a smile out of Allana as they stepped out into the dim, overcast sun, Olivia said, "I'll bet you a solid mantle they're okay. Any minute now they'll pop up, probably with some weird new powers and precious information none of us could find."
Allana snorted, but the words worked, wringing a bitter little smirk out of her. "That's a bad bet," she said. "You're probably ri-"
Allana cut off as a scream suddenly echoed down the street.
Olivia reached for the sword at her side, Allana's daggers coming free of their sheathes in a pair of liquid flashes, and more screams quickly followed on the heels of the first. Screams of pain, and terror, and despair.
They had only taken a single step towards the source of the noise when an ogre stepped around the corner, a gnarled, bloodied club clutched in one hand.
#
"It's a ring of heat projection," Olan explained.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" the sentinel asked, eyeing the gaudy ruby ring with a suspicious gaze.
Olan sighed. "It passively absorbs body heat from your hand to charge itself, and once it's full, it can output a single gout of fire."
The sentinel grunted. He was young, and noble by the look of him. "And it really works? Can I test it?"
It took everything in Olan to not roll his eyes, and he tried desperately to keep his sales face in place as he responded. "As I said, young sir, it charges off of body heat. This one is currently uncharged, so it would take some time to charge it."
Olan noted as the nearby clock bells tolled–noon already, was it? Deved should be by soon, then at least he'd be able to have some quiet time over lunch.
"Hmm…" the boy rubbed his chin. Olan recognized the expression easily enough–he was going to buy, but he was feigning disinterest in an effort to get a discount. "Well, would you do it for-"
The door to the shop suddenly slammed open, and Deved came running through, panting for air. Olan arched an eyebrow, about to ask what was wrong–when a six foot tall, dun-furred figured step in behind him and lifted a sword.
Olan wasn't a battle-gifted. He lacked the skill Alyssia and Olivia shared–but Deved had still convinced him it was worthwhile to be able to defend himself if needed, and it turned out, there were no small number of tricks available to a jeweler looking to take care of himself.
Olan didn't pause to gape, the way his customer did. He simply lifted his left hand and activated two of the rings on his middle finger.
A wall of force, visible only as a faint distortion in the air, appeared between the monster and Deved, catching its defending sword even as it fell, followed by a bolt of energy about the same size as Olan's head, which slammed into both that barrier and the gnoll behind it, sending them both flying back into the street.
Deved, more familiar with the rigors of violence than most trade-gifted, stumbled back to his feet and slammed the door shut behind him, throwing a solid locking bar into place as soon as he did.
"What's happening?" Olan asked, trying to put as much iron into his words as he could. Around him, the handful of customers milling about his shop watched with wide-eyes, frightful whispers weaving webs of fear into the air.
"I don't know," Dillen said. He slumped against a wall and slid straight down, until he was sitting on the floor. His breath was still coming in hard gasps, and only then did Olan notice the blood along his partner's left side. "Outsiders… everywhere. Attacking wherever they can."
"Outsiders are inside the city?" the young sentinel asked, aghast.
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"That's impossible," another woman said.
Before Olan could reply, something slammed against the barred door, making it rattle in place.
"Evidently not," he said dryly, trying to sound more like the new Lord of House Dennan than the frightened jeweler he was. "Please get to the back of the shop–does anyone have a healing gift that can help my partner?"
A delicate woman, dressed in a simple white sundress, raised a trembling hand. "I-I have the animist gift."
"Okay, let's have you-" The door rattled again, and a few customers let out panicked sounds. Olan grimaced and snagged the ring from the hands of the young sentinel, feeding some of his own mystic energy into it with one of his Artisan abilities. "Get him to the back of the shop, quick," Olan barked at his customers. "Any battle-gifted, assist me with the-"
The lockbar finally shattered and three more heavily-armored outsiders burst inside.
#
"You won't regret this," Alyssia tried to reassure the moneybroker, pocketing the promissory note he had offered her.
Terul sighed. "I've regretted every ring I ever offered your father, Dame Dennan. The only reason I offer you this at all is your brother's contracts."
"We're good for it," she promised. "Things are going to change for the Dennan family now, you'll see."
In the distance, she heard the tolling of the bells striking noon. Good, if she hurried, she could make it to Olan's store before he fled for lunch.
She left Terul with a final round of thanks and a brisk good-bye, and stepped outside. The air was heavy, thick with humidity even as the clouds built up overhead. They were in for a storm tonight, Alyssia decided.
She had only just turned towards Olan's shop when she heard the cries, panic and pain mingled.
Instinctively, Alyssia's hand shot down to her sword belt, only to close on empty air. She spat an acidic curse. It was considered gauche to wear a weapon when meeting a moneylender or solicitor, and so she had left her sword back at the manor. Crossing noble trends…
Fine then. She was an Initiate, one of the most respected scouts among Elliven's sentinels. She didn't need a weapon to help those who needed it.
Alyssia turned to run towards the source of the screams, her hands arching into two distinct shapes as she prepared her abilities. Around her, people fled, crying out in terror, their shouts not making any sense–and then Alyssia saw the gnolls chasing after the fleeing civilians.
They were regulars, veteran infantry wearing black iron armor and wielding those heavy, pitted weapons they seemed to prefer. Already, they were covered in a liberal coating of blood, and Alyssia could see the remains of a handful of civilians behind them, most of their faces still bearing expressions of shock.
She didn't stop to consider how the gnolls had made it into the city. She just knew that she had to stop them.
A girl stumbled, falling to the ground, able to do nothing more than curl up into a tight ball as the gnoll behind her raised his crude sword–and then the earth abruptly opened beneath it, the gnoll barely having the chance to yip in surprise before the marble cobbles closed back over its head, burying it completely.
With a sharp gesture of her other hand, Alyssia brought two more of those smooth marble pavers flying up from the street, and she turned towards the other gnolls.
#
A Trick Step carried Allana past both the ogre's descending club and the cloud of dust and pulverized marble the failed attack made as it smashed into the ground. She appeared directly underneath its too-long arm, and her daggers stabbed straight up into its exposed flesh.
Cutting into the ogre's limb was like stabbing thick clay, her daggers only slowly sinking into the monster's dense hide. Surprised as she had been by the outsider's sudden appearance, her daggers weren't poisoned, but since coming to Elliven, Allana had invented a way to deal with just that sort of situation.
With a grunt, Allana whipped her daggers free, a lazy spurt of muddy ogre blood following them. The sluggish outsider was starting to respond, but she had time still.
She dropped one dagger to the cobblestones and unceremoniously thrust two fingers straight up and into the ogre's bleeding wound.
Gross, Allana thought, but effective. And then she conjured her strongest resilience poison, straight from her fingertips and into the ogre's bloodstream.
That done, she Trick Stepped back out of the ogre's shadow, mere seconds before its free hand reached down in a clumsy attempt to snatch her up.
"It's on a timer now," she told Olivia.
The silver knight was panting with the exertion of the fight, though she was yet unwounded. The ogre's brutish attacks were simple enough to dodge, if a bit rough on the surrounding real estate–but if either of them got brushed by one of the massive outsider's attacks, it would most likely kill them, even with their respective resilience boons and Allana's charms to protect them.
"We assume," Olivia said. "But it's barely been bothered by my best attacks. We have no idea how much resilience it has."
Allana shrugged. The ogre had reoriented on the two of them and was lifting its club, preparing for another assault. "Then we just keep trying to dose it and cut it up. Unless you've got a better idea?"
"Nope," Olivia admitted with a sigh. "At least we bought enough time for the civilians to get clear."
"Here it comes," Allana warned, unnecessarily, as the ground shook under the ogre's feet.
Olivia dropped her bent silver shield and conjured a fresh one. "Flank it," she said.
Allana nodded and Stepped away again, resuming her lethal dance around the massive outsider.
It took long, brutal minutes, fighting on the knife's edge, knowing that a single mistake would leave them crippled at best, before the ogre finally started to slow down. Putrid black blood dripped from its numerous wounds–but still it stood, and still it fought.
Olivia cursed under her breath, throwing aside her mangled, battered shield. She reached for a new one, her sixth since the fight began–and none came.
So. Even astral silver had its limits. It was a bad time to learn that.
The outsider lumbered in a broad turn, and its ugly, beady eyes focused on Olivia again.
They had been fighting the ogre for too long, now. Something was happening in Elliven, and rather than helping the people who needed it, Olivia and Allana had been tied up fighting a single outsider.
"Cross it," Olivia decided. It was time to end this. "Allana!" she shouted. She couldn't see the rogue, but she knew the girl would be nearby, waiting for another chance at a sneak attack. "Go high!"
Olivia had to trust that her friend would know what she meant, as she immediately ran forward, her Mantle of Wind swirling around her, reducing her weight as she threw a Gust Blast straight down at the shattered cobbles.
Lightened by her Mantle, Olivia flew into the air, a cotton boll on the wind. She leveled her sword as she hit the apex of her arc and tapped the force rune, sending a lance of solid kinetic energy shooting down at the ogre, throwing it off-balance and sending Olivia even further upwards.
She just needed to line up her attack–and then Allana was there, Trick Step taking the girl into the air just above Olivia. A quick movement slipped a necklace around Olivia's neck, one slung with gently glowing glass charms–and then Allana braced her arms and legs against the knight, and Olivia dropped her Mantle, her friend's sudden, vicious push helping gravity to send her plummeting, her sword lined up with the ogre and-
The impact was savage, jarring through her entire body. A screaming pain followed on its heels as her left elbow, both shoulders, and her left knee all dislocated at once, in the same moment that her right forearm and half-a-dozen ribs snapped and the necklace of charms Allana had given her shattered in a chorus of tinkling snaps. Fortunately, the ogre was even worse off, as her sword effortlessly penetrated through the giant's neck, through its spine, through its throat, and out the other side.
Finally, with ponderous grace, the slain outsider collapsed, taking Olivia with it, Allana's charms working to keep her body from giving up the fight as she fell.
And even as stars danced in Olivia's vision, words appeared before her eyes.
[Gift of the Vanguard] has leveled up!
[Gift of Wind] has leveled up!
In recognition of your bravery in the face of insurmountable odds, the Veteran has offered you [the Gift of the Champion].