CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Unexpected guests.
Adaeya, Ridgeline Pass in the now fortified camp.
Three days after the creatures hit us, I stood on the northern wall Kyle and ARi had raised across the canyon, watching the dust roll across the ground beyond it.
The southern wall behind us was nearly twenty feet thick at its base and stretched from one side of the canyon to the other, its ends driven deep into the surrounding rock. Kyle had shaped the first version before the wounded were even carried from the battlefield, dragging stone up from beneath the canyon floor. ARi had spent the days since reinforcing it with phased stone and bronze, angled supports, and firing platforms that gave the Velites a clear view of everything approaching from the south.
The wall beneath my feet was larger.
It stood beyond where the first two creatures had died and their bodies had split open. The wall sealed the canyon ahead of us beneath layers of stone and metal that rose almost forty feet from the ground. The outer face sloped forward to make climbing difficult, while a second barrier behind it created a protected channel where the soldiers could move between gun positions without exposing themselves.
But after we had taken so many losses, ARi wasn’t taking any chances and had phased in Bronze Rotary Cannons that looked a lot like the ones on the airships. There had to be at least six of the scary-looking batteries, all manned by legionnaires.
But after all the chaos that had happened, the canyon had been quiet for the last three days.
Below us, the others had already gathered around the simple hearth, waiting for us to join them and discuss what we were going to do next.
“You’re doing it again,” ARi said beside me.
I glanced over to find her watching me. “Doing what?”
“Staring into the distance like you’re personally responsible for any of this.”
“I’m keeping watch.”
“There are three Wraith teams beyond the wall.” She stepped closer and rested her forearms on the stone beside mine. “You’re brooding.”
A window appeared between us.
ARi straightened beside me as the same pale light reflected across her face.
[ASCENDANCY MESSAGE]
The Veylith civilization has been defeated. All of the Veylith champions have fallen before reaching a progression node.
The Veylith claim to this world has been forfeited.
Two competing civilizations remain.
For a moment, I could only stare at the words. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t…” She looked back up at me with wide eyes. “Gavin, I don’t think the other races were prepared for this rule change. It also means that these changes were broad and not specifically targeting us. This doesn’t make any sense.”
I looked down toward the canyon floor. Kyle, Tim, Yumi, Hannah, and Tanya had all stopped around the hearth, each of them staring at their own copy of the announcement. Red and Charlie stood nearby with several of the legion captains, all of them looking toward us.
ARi dismissed the window, and I followed her down the broad stone steps built into the northern wall.
The others were still gathered around the hearth when we reached the canyon floor. Tanya looked exhausted, but she had finally gotten enough rest that she could stand without someone hovering over her.
Hannah remained close beside her anyway, one hand occasionally moving toward the side of her own face where the acid had burned through her armor three days earlier. There was no sign of scarring, not physically anyway. But I could tell it was bothering her.
“Did everybody get the same message?” I asked as we approached the others.
“Yeah, it’s looking that way,” Tim said as he swiped the window from his view. “These stupid announcements aren’t helpful at all. It’s almost like the system is intentionally trying to be vague.”
“At first I thought they were that way on purpose. You know, to try and keep things fair.” Kyle cut in as he sat on a rock near Yumi. “At this point, though, it’s almost as if the system’s being a prick.”
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Hannah said. “Isn’t this a good thing? One less competitor?”
Before anybody could answer, a second system announcement suddenly popped into view.
[ASCENDANCY MESSAGE]
The Sarith civilization has been defeated. All of the Sarith champions have fallen before reaching a progression node.
The Sarith claim to this world has been forfeited.
One civilization remains.
Remaining champions must reach the next progression node to continue in the Ascendancy. If all contending champions fall this world will be forfeit and consumed by the void.
I dismissed the window and looked toward ARi. She had already dismissed her own and was staring intently at Red and Charlie.
“You’re breaking some pretty serious rules to work around my protections,” she said softly. She moved over and knelt in front of them, never taking her eyes off theirs as they stared back, their faces expressionless and their eyes glazed over.
“You know nothing, usurper.”
The voice that came out of Charlie was not his. It was flat and devoid of any inflection.
“You’re so afraid of us. Afraid of me and my kind that you would destroy this world to try and stop us?”
“This world is nothing. A grain of sand in the desert. There are countless others. You think small, Guide!” the voice growled.
“Gavin!” ARi pleaded as she suddenly cried out in pain and fell forward onto her hands.
I tried to rush to her side, but Red raised his hand and a blast of energy knocked all of us backward.
ARi fought against whatever was bearing down on her, and as she lifted her head, I could see blood sliding down her face from her nose and eyes.
“No!” she gasped, barely able to get the word out as she pulled herself back onto her knees.
All at once, two cloaked figures appeared on either side of Charlie and Red. One reached into the hearth, grabbed a burning branch, and swept it across the front of the two kobolds.
ARi rose to her feet. “This world will never be yours, and neither will Earth!”
I could hear the rage in her voice as blood continued to run down the side of her face.
One of the cloaked figures pulled his hood back. “Architect, pull my brothers into stasis now!”
I looked down into Sawyer’s eyes, opened my Architect menu, and pulled Red and Charlie into stasis.
Before they could dissolve, ARi raised her hand toward both of them. “I see how you’ve circumvented my changes. Before you go, I have a message for you to take to the others. You tell them I’m coming. That we’re coming.”
They faded as the system pulled them into stasis.
“Holy shit!” Kyle said, managing to finally get back to his feet. “Did that just really happen?”
The second cloaked figure pulled his hood back, and Jack ran to ARi’s side.
“My brothers… Are they?”
“The Ascended who had taken control of them are gone. Their breach of the rules allowed me to fix the method they used to take control of them,” ARi said, falling back onto her knees. “Gavin, when you’re able, you can safely bring them back.”
“They’re on cooldown for a while,” I said as I closed the menu.
Before anyone could say anything else, Yumi and Tanya tackled Jack and Sawyer in fierce hugs. Lily and Bishop pranced around the dogpile, happy to see the two rogues return.
Jack and Sawyer returned every embrace. Sawyer held on to Yumi for several seconds before gently pulling away, while Jack rested one hand against Tanya’s shoulder and looked across the faces gathered around the hearth.
ARi wiped the blood from beneath her nose with the back of her hand. “What happened to the rest of those who were with you?”
Jack lowered his head.
“We received word of a threat near the northern outpost and took the legion into Ridgeline Pass to investigate. Our camp was swarmed without warning, and the others…”
“I am afraid the others didn’t make it, Ward,” Sawyer finished for him.
The movement around the hearth slowly stopped. Bishop settled onto the ground beside Yumi, while Lily moved closer to Jack and sat with her body pressed against the kobold’s side.
“They fought valiantly,” Jack said. “Every one of them. But Sawyer and I were the only ones among the legion with abilities beyond our weapons and our own physical strength. The soldiers had training, discipline, and courage enough to shame either of us.”
“But their skill and bravery were not enough,” Sawyer said, his eyes fixed on the fire.
“Did you make it through the pass?” Tim asked.
“The two of us eventually made it out of this canyon,” Sawyer said. “But we weren’t able to get much further. As far as we could see, those things, those monsters, had consumed everything. Plants, animals… everything.”
“We tried to find the settlement or anyone who might have survived beyond the mountains, but there was nothing left for us to find. So we remained hidden and worked our way south when we could, but the creatures had spread through the entire region. Every time we thought we had found a path around them, there were more.”
“We tried our best to watch this new enemy, learn as much as we could, and bring what we learned back to Meilun. When a large group of them suddenly moved toward the center of the canyon, we followed, keeping a safe distance behind. That’s how we found you here.”
The fire cracked as part of a log collapsed into the coals. The flames slowly settled lower while the weight of what Jack and Sawyer had told us spread through the group.
I had notifications waiting at the edge of my vision again. They’d been there since the battle, but I’d been dismissing them until now. Judging by the way Hannah kept glancing toward something only she could see, I wasn’t the only one who had been putting them off.
I looked around the hearth at the others.
“We’ve all been sitting on battle and level notifications for three days. If we’re being forced toward that node, we better take some time and work through them before we move again.”
Kyle nodded and lowered himself back onto the rock beside Yumi. “No arguments here.”
“I have a level waiting, but I haven’t had the energy to look at it.”
“So do I,” Hannah said. “In fact, I leveled up twice!”
ARi looked toward me. “The fact that Gavin managed to hit 11 just shows how bad that fight was. After level 10 it looks like we’re going to be hitting a pretty hard experience plateau. The threshold for leveling up doubles every time. For example, to reach level 10, we need 160,000 experience points. To reach level 11, it takes twice that.”
I pulled the notification into view and expanded the window where everyone around the hearth could see it. I briefly glanced over my skill choices. All three options were pretty good, but after everything that had happened, my mind had been made up before I ever opened the window.
[SYSTEM WINDOW]SKILL SELECTION
Congratulations, Gavin Daniels!
You have 1 unassigned skill point to spend. Please select one of the following:
-
Phasemancer-Spirit 1. Command spirit-state Phasemancers capable of channeling life force, manipulating soul essence, interacting with incorporeal entities, and reanimating the fallen through spirit phase binding. Control point conversion: 1 point spawns 1 Phasemancer-Spirit. Energy: 25. Cooldown: 90 seconds.
-
Emergency Recall 1. Immediately returns Spirit-born cohort from stasis. This ability overrides Stasis Cool Down and heals the cohort and replenishes their reserve. Energy: 20. Cooldown: 60 seconds.
-
Phase Integrity 1. Reinforces active cohorts and phase-generated constructs against effects that drain energy or destabilize phase matter. Initial resistance: 15 percent.
As always, the system was offering me three choices. Even though I had already made up my mind, I looked to the others for their insights.
“Gavin, these are all great options,” Kyle said as he scratched the short beard on his chin. “To be honest, any of these probably could have been a huge game changer in that fight we just had, especially Phase Integrity.”
I looked over at Tanya. She looked exhausted. I thought of all those wounded kobolds I had pulled into stasis. It had taken her a couple of days to get to all of them, and some had come out of stasis on the brink of death.
“You guys, we talked about the Spiritmancers before, but now I’m looking at that option for two completely different reasons. We’re essentially an army on the march with one healer. And you guys saw what those sons of bitches did to ARi through Red and Charlie.”
“You’re thinking these Spiritmancers might be able to help?” ARi asked.
“I do. In fact, I’ve been thinking about a way to stop or at least help fight the Ascended interference since the first time it happened on Earth. Now that I know they can try to hurt you..”
“With cross-training at level 2, Gav, I bet you any of those Spiritmancers you spawn in just might have access to some of Tanya’s abilities,” Tim said.
“That’s what I was thinking too,” Tanya said. “It definitely looks like Life Force fits in the Spiritmancer skill tree.”
I selected Phasemancer-Spirit and brought up a new window to show the details.
[SYSTEM WINDOW]SKILL DETAILS:
Phasemancer-Spirit
Unlocks Spiritmancer cohorts trained to manipulate life force and soul essence through phase technology.
Spiritmancers can perceive the spiritual condition of living and spirit-born targets. They can channel life force to stabilize critical injuries, stop blood loss, support damaged organs, and accelerate the natural repair of tissue. Their initial healing abilities are limited and cannot replace missing limbs or restore the dead.
Spiritmancers can also reinforce the connection between a spirit and its physical or phase-generated form, assisting those suffering from possession, suppression, or other forms of spiritual interference.
Further development of the Spiritmancer skill tree may unlock direct interaction with incorporeal entities, the summoning and binding of unanchored spirits, and temporary reanimation through spirit phase binding.
Control point conversion: 1 point spawns 1 Phasemancer-Spirit.
Energy: 25.
Cooldown: 90 seconds.
I pulled up my Architect menu, found the Spiritmancer in the spawn section, and immediately selected the option.