Broken Lands

“Rockbugs!” Tellix honked in obvious excitement. He flapped his wings and a massive wave of wind swept over the half dozen nearby meteor-insects. The four Rockshell Crawlers were bashed into the ground as if stepped on by a giant foot, while the flame that emerged from the two Fallen Insectites blazed out of control and left them blackened husks when it ended.

“Tellix!” Notii shouted at his teammate. “What have I told you about that Ability?”

“Save it for a group!” Tellix cheerfully mis-stated Notii’s instructions.

“A large group,” Notii corrected with a sigh. He was used to his friend’s exuberance and knew he’d settle down once he killed a few things and the challenge became more serious. The first meteor fall was never difficult, which was another reason to be careful; Meteor Falls was a fun Event, even if it wasn’t Noctii’s favorite the way it was Tellix’s, but that was probably because he always had to restrain Tellix from blowing all of his mana on the first Fall or two.

He picked out the people he wanted to handle the First Fall, unless they had to do something unusual. “Mareth, Ci’an, Coben, see what you can take out with passive Abilities. Save your mana. Lith’e, corridors. Bimet-”

“Armor piercing. On it,” Bimet interrupted. The gauzy-winged squirrel bounced cheerfully into the air. He really didn’t need the direction beyond knowing that Notii wanted him active right now; it would cost him a bit to enhance all of the Abilities used by the three teams but save the others far more as even relatively weak Abilities could kill if they could get through the rockbugs’ exteriors. He’d have to sit out at least half of the Falls, but that number was lower if they were all at the beginning.

“Sophia, Xin’ri, you both said you have some distance. Do you have an attack or enhancement that you can use cheaply enough that you can keep it up for hours with only a few breaks?” Notii knew his teams, and only Mareth and Coben could really manage that. It simply wasn’t needed in most zones, though people who fought mostly by weakening their enemies the way Coben did had to be able to stay in the fight longer than their opponents.

“If I keep it slow,” Xin’ri answered immediately. “My staves are all made to have a slow ambient charge capacity, it’s a lot like the way a passive Ability works. Easy enough.”

Notii nodded. That was something he’d seen before, though it was rare and definitely a sign that Xin’ri thought about her gear. Most people wanted simpler, cheaper gear. Xin’ri clearly wasn’t one of those people.

It was going to come in handy for the Event. There was time between Falls but not enough to recover all that much mana. He hoped the new team would keep up, but seeing a four-person team of strikers with excellent but clearly used gear that would slot in the gaping hole left by Ailimin’s team’s absence was completely worth the risk.

Their Pillar wasn’t going to be carrying the weight of the entire Event, after all; how many Bonus Rounds they managed almost always came down to how many undersized teams with an upgrade advantage joined the Event, and it looked like this one was going to be particularly bad. No one had forfeit yet, at least; it wasn’t quite bad enough to expect a fail, and the penalty was harsh enough to make people really think about it before they gave up.

That didn’t mean people wouldn’t start to bail if it looked like they were going to die or the Event was going to fail. Events were a good source of aurichalc, and sometimes other materials from things like the Reward Rounds, but they weren’t as dependable as hunting in the World Tree usually was. Giving up several days for an Event that failed and therefore rewarded nothing wasn’t worth it to some teams, even if Notii thought they were shortsighted idiots.

If you stayed for the fail, there was no penalty other than the lack of rewards. For something like Meteor Pillars, all you had to do was retreat to another Pillar and convince the team there to do the same; eventually, enough Pillars would fall that the event failed, and that might take only a couple of hours once it was obvious it was going to happen. There was no reason to give up your chance to enter another Event for months just to save a couple hours’ time during the retreat.

With luck, it wouldn’t come to that. Roughly twelve and three quarters people per Pillar was a bad ratio, because it meant there were a lot more Pillars where the teams thought they needed sixteen people than Pillars where they thought they could get away with four or even eight, which meant the participants were weaker than average and they were starting with fewer Pillars. Despite that, they’d probably still make two or three Reward Rounds. Notii knew he told the newcomers four, but well … four was aspirational. They might manage it, if they were lucky.

Early rockbugs was sort of lucky. They were a relatively weak monster type, even when enhanced by being in a later Fall, but they were particularly sturdy. If they happened to land on the third or fourth Fall, they were likely to delay things enough to cost the Bonus Round. Of course, that was also fairly unlucky; if they happened to land on the last Fall, they’d be really sturdy but a lot less dangerous than some of the other options. Overall, Notii thought it was lucky.

“I can only work within my Domain,” Sophia answered slowly. “But… that’s pretty big these days. I can also shape it to an extent. I … really, there are several things I can do for a long time. Plume Strikes cost me the feather I use; if it’s using up feathers I generate with Plume Shift, that does cost mana but it’s pretty easy to recover. For other feathers, I’ll avoid using the good ones but I have, uh, thousands of second upgrade feathers and I’ve lost count of the ones that are below that. They’re essentially free unless I add an Aural Plume … oh, and I can do that for anyone’s strikes, not just my own. Would that be better? I could add Reinforced to help with the … exoskeleton? Or I could … uh, do they have Shield? Or .. wait. This might be a good time to use Stunning Plumes, I haven’t done that in ages but it will shock them and make them freeze for a bit if you want? Or if they have a particular Ability that’s a problem, Binding Plumes can make using mana a lot harder.”

Notii gave Sophia a stare that any of his teammates would have recognized. It combined ‘why didn’t you say something earlier?’ with ‘Really? Do you have to dump all of that on me now?”

Naturally, Sophia had no idea what he meant.

Notii sighed. He should have known better than to accept the short description that she could attack things like a striker and also provide some useful enhancements for teammates without asking for details. If he had, maybe he’d have learned that her idea of ‘enhancements for teammates’ was enhancing their attacks with things that usually required a dedicated weakening Ability. “You can keep that up for hours? That’s a lot of people to enhance.”

“Yeah?” Sophia sounded a little confused. “It’s not much per strike and the mana density’s high enough to support it here. I’m not going to run out of mana unless I start enhancing strikes to deal with fourth upgrade armor or something; oh, or if someone throws enough magic at me that I have to dispel or avoid, that can be expensive too.”

Notii shook his head slightly. She was either an insane mana battery or her Abilities were nearly useless. He wasn’t sure which he thought it was; she was from another world and that meant she had the aurichalc to pay the Gateway fee, which usually meant she was good, but it could also mean she was simply rich. Her entire group’s gear was somewhat worn, which usually meant experience, and she was young. He could hope she’d somehow managed to swing either an incredible Sphere or had spent tremendous numbers of Wisps and Thread on her Core.

“Can you do both, then? Enhance people until the rockbugs are close enough and then switch to killing? They don’t have Shield; rockbugs have a hard outer shell, instead.” Notii wasn’t certain how large Sophia’s Domain was, but the rockbugs were well outside any third upgrade Domain he’d ever seen. Admittedly, they grew higher with both Body and Core, and a Domain-focused Sphere would make it even larger, especially if it was in the Anchor, but the meteors were falling a long ways from the Pillars.

“‘Course,” Sophia answered cheerfully. “Rending should work, it helps focus everything on the enemy instead of spending some on a Shield that isn’t there. It’s essentially a straight boost to the amount of force transmitted, as long as there’s no Shield; it splashes uselessly if there is. Oh! I forgot to mention, I can also add sweetfire to everyone’s attacks if it will help, along with Rending. It’s from an item, sweetfire’s a fire-variant from a friend of ours that will only hurt enemies, not allies.”

“If it costs charges, don’t use it,” Notii warned Sophia, “Not on the first wave. If it doesn’t, go ahead; the Insectites are particularly vulnerable to fire even though they also attack with it.” He still wasn’t sure if she was an overgeared careless wealthy scion of some powerful family or if she was a powerful Called. He’d find out when they actually attacked.

“Tellix…” Notii trailed off, then gave the order he knew the goose was waiting for. “Wait for Lith’e to group them up, then kill them. Don’t use Mass Concussion; Destructive Breeze is plenty.”

Destructive Breeze was more than he wanted to let Tellix use, but there was no way the silly goose would restrict himself to Raise Wind. It was better to let him give him a chance to burn off some energy during the first fall.

Those were all of the instructions Notii had to give. It was more than enough, really; he had eight of the twelve people at the Pillar acting. That was his preferred ratio; it gave the last third a chance to rest and recover. He’d rotate who was recovering with each Fall. Once the Falls started overlapping so that there was no recovery time for everyone, he’d rotate during Falls, as well.

On their own, eight Falls was roughly three days; the Guide sometimes varied how long they lasted, but six to eight hours per Fall was normal, though Notii had heard of everything from four to twelve for a single Fall, and sometimes there were breaks between Falls for sleep as long as they were completed in time. This Fall had a four-hour timer, but that was the time where meteors would be falling; they couldn’t yet see how much additional time they’d have to kill the rockbugs.

Vines poked out of sterile stone as Lith’e went to work. The crafty woodpecker didn’t bother with thorns; he didn’t need them and they weren’t very effective on rockbugs anyway. Instead, the vines wove themselves into a self-reinforcing thicket that was far stronger than each individual vine. The hard part, according to Lith’e, was growing them all in the first place. Weaving them together was a matter of practice, but it was something Lith’e was good at.

He was also going to be utterly useless for at least the next two Falls, probably deeply asleep. That was the price of creating lanes that would funnel the rockbugs and whatever came after them, but it was a cost that was easy for Notii to pay. The vines wouldn’t disappear when Lith’e slept. Oh, if they were chopped into pieces, they’d disappear, and they’d grow increasingly fragile with time, but realistically they’d last until the first kaiju, which usually arrived during the fourth fall, and even then they’d probably only lose a couple of lanes. Lith’e would be more than capable of replacing them by then if they were still useful.

A lot depended on what else landed.