Broken Lands

Lith’e built the lanes from the edge of a clear area around the pillar outwards, creating entire areas that were effectively three or four feet higher than the others, short enough to be seen over but tall enough and poor enough terrain to channel the enemies. Any of the rockbugs that chose to try to travel on top of the vines was easy for Mareth and Ci’an to pick off, while Coben handled the ones that stayed in the lanes. In fact, as Notii watched, the number on the low walls made of vines dropped precipitously; now that the lanes were there, enough of the rockbugs seemed to have realized that their targets were at the center that they weren’t even trying to penetrate the vines.

That was going well. It helped that rockbugs were tactically stupid. That might not be true of all of the waves, but it made this one easy.

Notii shifted his attention farther out, to where the meteors fell in the wide space between Pillars. They were starting to stack up beyond the range of the attacks, but it was pretty clear by the occasional arrow that struck a bug that the limit was by choice, not necessity.

Feathers flashed into existence, disappeared, and reappeared almost immediately as a presence washed over Notii and seized control of the mana around him. It was strange, almost polite, completely unlike the aggressive Domains he was used to. Even stranger, it didn’t suppress his Abilities as he fought against its weight; instead, it enhanced his senses, especially his sense of the mana around himself. It made him wonder if the woman knew how to use her Domain offensively at all; if she didn’t, he needed to suggest that she find someone who could teach her. Not spilling aggression on your allie was helpful but far less important than suppressing your enemies, and that was part of the point of a Domain.

Even discounting the lack of suppression, this was definitely not a normal third upgrade Domain. Notii had one, so he knew; like most people, his Domain formed a sphere around himself that extended no more than fifty feet from himself, and that was if he stretched to his utmost. He couldn’t change its shape, though to be fair he’d never tried.

This was far stronger and it was oblong, stretched into a pill shape with one end more than a hundred feet beyond the Pillar in one direction and the other end at least twice that far in the other direction. It covered all of the lanes Lith’e was able to create and then some. Unlike most Domains, it wasn’t invisible; instead, feathers floated in the air frequently enough that Notii was able to easily delineate the extent of the Domain. “She could damn near cover a zone with that.”

“She has.” The other team’s bulwark and healer grinned at Notii. It was an odd combination, but Notii had to admit that it sounded an effective one; it would certainly reduce the risk that a stray strike hurt the healer. He wasn’t sure he wanted the healer to always be the focus of attacks, but it wasn’t his team. Having any healing at all had to be useful, even though the man was clearly not a dedicated healer. “She can hear you, if she’s paying attention, but she can’t talk out loud.”

Notii nodded, unsurprised. Abilities that merged you with your Domain like the one Sophia used often had limitations like that; being able to see and hear but not speak was fairly common. “Now that I’ve felt this … if you have enough feathers, why aren’t we using it on enemies as a defensive Ability? If you can make it so that attacks try to bypass Shield but splash if they can’t … enemies would have to fight off Sophia’s Domain to hurt anyone, and this isn’t a normal Domain. I can’t tell how hard it would be to fight, but I don’t think I’d want to try.”

“I never thought of it.” Sophia’s voice was clear through the Lifeweb, silent to his ears but far clearer to his mind than the whisper he expected of an Archon from another world. “You’re right, it’s worth a try. Probably not against the rockbugs, though; I’m not sure any of them are going to get close enough to actually hurt anything. Unless they can throw spikes or something?”

“The Insectites, the ones on fire, can sometimes condense fireballs. There is one that throws spikes, but I haven’t seen it yet.” Notii paused and watched as a Rockshell Crawler died from a single strike to its head. That was fairly impressive; like many insects and unlike the turtles they also somewhat resembled, Rockshell Crawlers didn’t always die quickly when their heads were pierced. Complete destruction of the head’s innards would do it, but a single arrow was not always enough. Maybe it was the fire that Sophia added that turned it from a slow kill to a fast one?

It wouldn’t matter for the Insectites. Unlike the Rockshells, Insectites didn’t have a head at all. They were a flaming meteor with legs, that was it.

The dead Rockshell Crawler shifted and seemed to collapse in on itself with a puff of dust that dissipated before Notii’s eyes. That answered one question; they weren’t going to have to deal with mounds of bodies. Meteor Pillars wasn’t consistent about that; some Events had creatures that left bodies behind while others got them out of the way. Notii was fine with the lack of bodies; there was rarely anything worth harvesting from them and their presence was something else for Lith’e to have to deal with if they were left behind. He’d just as soon save Lith’e’s capabilities for other problems.

Four hours later, Notii was bored. That was a common problem for people who weren’t active on any particular Fall, but this time seemed especially bad, even for the first Fall. The only thing he had to do was direct the people who were fighting, and that was not exactly something he needed to do much of when things were going this well.

Mareth, Ci’an, and Tellix had turned three of Lith’e’s lanes into a competition of sorts. The first version was “how quickly can we kill them after they enter the lane,” but Notii put a stop to that almost as soon as it started. It was a waste of resources when all three of them attacked the same rockbug at essentially the same time. They each had their own lane, now, and they weren’t competing on speed; Notii insisted on that in a doomed but still worthwhile attempt to save some of Tellix’s mana for later.

In some weird sense, it was even working. Tellix was using the cheap windblades that he usually didn’t bother with on the Insectites when they came in small numbers and saving his bigger attacks for when there were enough enemies to be worth it. Notii thought it might be the best chance he’d ever seen to actually convince Tellix that bigger wasn’t always better.

He wasn’t going to bother the goose now. That would only undermine the effect, plus Tellix was having fun and it would be sad to disrupt that.

Notii’s thoughts about what would be the best way to convince his friend hit a snag when he noticed that there was less than five minutes left on the timer for the Meteor Fall. He normally didn’t see it tick over, but this time it was simply too easy. He glanced up in the sky and what he saw confirmed what the timer said: there were exactly two meteors on their way down that they’d have to deal with. The fact that there were only a few dozen other rockbugs milling around outside the lanes meant that they were essentially done.

He watched the timer as it flipped from no time remaining in the Fall to four hours remaining until the next Fall. That was far longer than they needed; in fact, they could probably be done in five or ten minutes if they hunted down the remaining rockbugs. It would take closer to half an hour if they waited for the rockbugs to enter the lanes; some of them always took a while to disease which Pillar to target.

Maybe he should check and see if anyone else needed help. A glance at the number of Pillars remaining gave him a second shock; they’d lost exactly one so far. With the way Meteor Pillars worked, one lost during a Fall probably meant that one of the meteors actually struck the Pillar or something; if a team simply wasn’t keeping up, it was far more common to lose a cluster as their failure to kill enough overwhelmed the other nearby teams. If no one was overwhelmed, a simple request through the Lifeweb was enough to call in reinforcements, especially for an enemy like rockbugs.

Notii pushed out an offer to help anyone nearby clean up the extras and was somehow not surprised that the primary response he got was more offers of help instead of requests for aid. All of the nearby teams were offering, so there was no reason to worry about it. This must have been an even easier Fall than Notii expected if all of the Pillars were fine.

As it turned out, it took less than one of the four hours allotted to clean up the last of the rockbugs, which cut the time to the next wave short and win them their first Bonus Round. That wasn’t always true, but more often than not the Guide seemed to assume that if you wanted extra time, you’d simply trap a monster and hold it there while you rested or whatever. It was easy enough to do with something like rockbugs, and there certainly wasn’t much of a need for a break after the first Fall.

Notii hoped this would be one of the Meteor Pillar Events with designated rest breaks after every three of four Falls. Those were always easier to deal with, because you could sleep without worry. He didn’t expect it; unlike body disposal, rest breaks appeared in only about one in ten Events, and it was even less common in Meteor Pillar Events.

Fifteen minutes after the last rockbug died at a Pillar far away from Noctii’s, the first meteor of the second Fall crashed into the dead landscape. It cracked in two and molten lava poured out of it and reformed into a Lava Salamander, which set the theme of the second Meteor Fall: monsters formed of molten rock.

They were particularly hazardous to the vines used to create lanes, scorching and crumpling them with each spit of flame or simply with the heat of their bodies. By the end of the Fall, the far end of most of the lanes was ash and the near end was compromised in several places, despite Sophia swapping to her Binding enhancement that restricted mana flow and Ability usage. It only worked once the enemy was struck, and far more of the lava creatures simply died outright than Notii expected.

Not that that was something to complain about. It was really quite helpful and the reason only the far end of the vine lanes were swiftly-dispersing ash.

Xin’ri was especially good at killing them. Icicles should not have been particularly good against lava creatures, but the puncture followed by a steam explosion as the ice quickly flashed from frozen to gaseous was more than enough to handle a simple lava salamander. It cost her a little more mana than she’d used in the previous Fall, since she ended up being the primary lava creature killer. It was completely worth the cost of having her sit out the following Fall; it was about time anyway.

Mareth was supposed to rest during the second Fall, which did not explain why Notii caught the sparrow talking to a feather while standing next to the enchantment around the Pillar. Sophia was supposed to be maintaining her enhancements, not talking about enchantments!

Notii told himself it was fine. Her enhancement was active; he could feel it. If she could maintain it and talk about the enchantment at the same time … well, at least she wasn’t bored the way Notii was.