Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

“Get off your sorry bottom and keep fighting, you lazy bum!” Alexandria yelled at her twin who had just tumbled after tripping over his two left feet while dancing away from the spawned minions.

“You get off your bum and actually hit the boss!” Alexandros yelled back furiously as he kipped up and parried a minion’s full powered strike.

They had been fighting the biome’s field boss for over an hour now, and they hadn’t actually managed to score a direct hit at the elusive creature. Which was funny considering the Great Shell was over a hundred paces tall and half that in girth. It resembled nothing so much as a giant cross between a snail and a crab. Its outer shell comprised most of its defenses and while she suspected that its actual body was more vulnerable, it was still covered in thick carapace. That wouldn’t be a problem with her piercing arrows — normally. But the shell was composed of some sort of substance that made it incredibly difficult for her Truth to pierce through.

Perhaps it was a natural counter? The Ennoia of Deflection? Inertial Cancellation? Or just plain Fortification?

It was quite interesting, but considering the circumstances, incredibly annoying.

It didn’t help that the Great Shell wasn’t alone. Not anymore, at least. Every ten seconds or so, it ejected a minion from the tip of its conical shell. Those things were two and a half paces tall, about the same in width, incredibly top heavy, and covered with carapace akin to a spiny crab. It had two pairs of arms, the upper ones topped with large pincers that were the length of her forearms, and the lower pair tipped with spine spitters. At the moment, there were half a dozen minion crabs scattered across the battlefield.

The central portion of the biome that was the battlefield, and the transition gate was a set of seven obsidian pillars that had hundred pace wide gaps in between. The pillars were of differing elevations, and the rope bridges that connected them had been severed pretty early in the fight. Not that it mattered much to her and her twin, but it did to the other set of combatants that had the ill grace to be at the wrong time and place.

She glanced at the group of martial artists fighting a bunch of minion crabs across the gap. They were clad in simple martial gis, and were surrounded by their power. She wasn’t sure if they had awakened Anima in the tradition of Mystics or if they were Conclavites — it was difficult to tell without an advanced display — but they were holding their own easily enough, even if they were fighting bare handed. In contrast to her brother who wielded a sabre in his right hand, while his left was held either to the small of his back in his duelist stance, or close to his chest so that he could use it to parry or catch attacks. That hand was protected by a metal backed glove, while his main hand was bare. Still, he was several leagues ahead in skill and Truth compared to the local martial enthusiasts, and he’d taken a single look at them and scoffed. The arrogant prick.

Not that he was doing much better than the fighters anyway. Not that she was doing much better herself.

Alexandria danced back against the crabby minion’s attempted grab while she pulled back the string of her battlebow. A bodkin arrow materialised from the aether, already nocked, and she released. A tiny bit of Intent was infused into the projectile allowing her Truth to latch onto it. The crabby minion’s thick carapace did little to protect it from her strike, and once the arrow was a couple of inches into the thing’s insides, she triggered the Intent and forced the bodkin point to shatter. Each fragment held a tiny bit of her Truth, and they sliced through flesh, bone, sinew, and carapace with the ease of a hot knife through frozen butter. One of the tiny fragments perforated the thing’s core and it died.

She smirked as none of the fragments were aimed back at her. That had not been the case when she first came up with the technique, and it was still embarrassing to remember how close to death she’d been when she did it against a nearby target and got perforated by her own attack. Back then, she’d used real arrows instead of materialised ones, which was another necessary safeguard, and real steel infused with the Ennoia of the Piercing Arrow. It had since transformed into a Colligia and was half a step to Reperta. The Arrows Piercing the Clouds.

Her battlebow hummed as it gathered power from the aether, or what was more formally called, the space between the layers of reality. The bow could hold enough charge to create thirteen arrows, though the time it took to gather energy to aetherforge arrows depended on how thin or thick the canvas was.

Alexandria grumbled while part of her mind, a strand of consciousness, continued to ponder and ruminate on the secrets of the World. Another of her dozen strands focused on venting her frustrations at the annoying fight. The Great Shell, even with its humongous size, was incredibly agile. And the rotten bug kept dipping into the gaps between the pillars, all the way down into the mists where she couldn’t see. What she couldn’t see, she couldn’t shoot. What she couldn’t shoot, she couldn’t kill!

And the rotter kept tossing its minion spawn at them!

It would have helped if the crabbers just rushed at her or Xandros, but no, they tried to be sneaky. There wasn’t much cover on the platform, but the minions were able to extrude some kind of biological goop that solidified into chunks. They practically dripped with the things and it didn’t take long for her to realise she had to take out the crabbers before they built a tall and thick pile of goop to hide behind. When they managed it, the rotters started throwing the goop at her, or her brother.

She glanced around for the Great Shell, and spotted it as it rose from behind one of the far pillars. Its head faced away from her, however, the conical point was tilted towards the southwest pillar. Enough of it was exposed that she had a window of a couple of seconds. She didn’t waste any of it.

She drew her battlebow and materialised a bodkin arrow. She infused her Intent into the arrowhead so it would shatter once inside the creature, but offset it enough that it needed to penetrate a couple of paces into it before it blew. That was the minimum thickness she needed to actually bypass shell and carapace in order to actually hit flesh. She thought briefly to include a guidance Intent, but shook it away in favour of a more potent piercing effect. Wherever she managed to hit, she didn’t know how thick the armour actually was. She only managed a couple of hits early in the battle, and both resulted in the monster’s temporary retreat. Of course, it also meant the boss spat out a dozen crabbies per platform.

Not that the other platforms had other delvers other than the one with the martial artists. That also meant that the crabbies on the other platforms had built up mini-forts to hunker down in. The aetherforged arrow practically trembled with suppressed power. She took a deep breath, aimed, then loosed as she breathed out.

The arrow streaked through the air and left a gleaming trail behind. It struck the Great Shell on the side, pierced through it, and a fraction of a second later, she touched off the fragmentation.

GRAAAAAHHHHH!

The roar shook the pillars and she stumbled, but managed to catch her footing before she faceplanted. Her eager look faded to mild disappointment when she failed to critically wound the boss… but that was fine. She had more arrows to shoot.

Whiff!

And she needed to watch her back.

Xandros’ grip on the collar and his timely yank saved her from having her skull caved in by a furious hammer blow. He punished the crabby’s temerity by a slice across the base of its claw. His own Truth allowed him to cut through the carapace with comparative ease, though it wasn’t that easy, of course. The monster hissed, backed up, and raised its lower arms to shoot spines at him. Since she wasn’t in the same firing line, all Xandros did to avoid getting hurt was to step aside. Then, he sliced the offending limb in twain. One really shouldn’t use a ranged weapon within sabre reach.

She shot that crabby in the face with a hastily aetherforged arrow, and Xandros pouted at her. “That was my kill!”

“Yeah, yeah. There’s plenty more where they came from.” Alexandria grumbled. “This is taking way too long!”

“Why don’t you shoot guided arrows then?” He said with a smirk, and she glared back. It wasn’t that simple. She could probably drain herself dry shooting randomly, and even if every arrow made its mark, without a better idea of where to target, she wouldn’t be able to kill the thing.

“Why don’t you go hunt it down and challenge it to a duel?” She shot back.

Xandros just grunted, “That’s not how it works.”

“You and your excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse!” He argued back half-heartedly. The two of them had specialised in different directions, and the points raised were old and well worn. It didn’t change their current situation, however.

“Should we try to coordinate with that group?” Alexandria offered.

Xandros shot her a dirty look, then grunted, “If you want to.” He dashed towards a freshly spawned crabby, stopped just in time for the creature’s attack to whiff past him, then he lunged into the opening and delivered a cut into its joints. Blue-grey fluid fountained out of the wound and the claw arm fell down as hydraulic pressure subsided. Xandy stepped around the crabby and delivered another vicious cut into its side, followed by a stab up the wound and it its core area. He didn’t quite nail the core, but the damage was enough that the thing fell on its knees. He followed up with a cut behind its head. The creatures didn’t have actual necks, but the area behind the eye-stalks was where its brain was, or at least, the vessels that fed oxygen to the brain. It collapsed soon after. The entire fight lasted all of three seconds.

Alexandria ran towards the edge of the platform as she followed the Great Shell’s retreat. She nocked and released another piercing, fragmenting bodkin arrow but the boss twisted around so that her projectile missed the open wound. Biomatter oozed out of the cratered flesh and shell, and if it managed to retreat, the wound would be closed and scabbed over by the time it resurfaced. Her arrow struck, penetrated, then exploded on the inside, which caused another shallow crater on the thing’s side.

“Oi!” One of the martial artists across the gap yelled, “can ye pin that thing down? We’ve got an attack that needs a bit of a wind up!”

“No!” Alexandria yelled back, “Can’t tie anything down!”

One of the other martial artists ran towards the edge. She noticed he barely managed to avoid getting his head knocked off by a crabby that lunged at him, but one of his martial brothers intercepted the attack. The runner didn’t even look worried. Such trust.

“There’s another group coming!” He yelled.

“Enemies?” Alexandria yelled back.

“Dunno! Delvers!”

Ah, unknowns then. Alexandria shook her head. More complications in all likelihood. Though if they managed to top the scales, she’d be quite grateful. A pity there was no easy way to group up with everyone, considering the bridges were gone. How were they to reach the portal, she didn’t know, but Shangria would work things out.

Or the newcomers would fly without resorting to fragile devices. She squinted at the incoming group, from the southeast pillar. They were surrounded by a bright corona of an active Anima. She felt a strange shiver of premonition and couldn’t help but stare.

Then she had to duck as another crabby tried to shoot her head off. Such was life.