Broken Lands

The sixth Fall was just as bad as Notii feared. Oh, their team was fine; their last Jump Tosser died all of five minutes after it landed, and that was ten minutes before the end of the Fall. Notii had no idea how the Flying Stars were still capable of fighting; four hours was a long time and they had to have burned through tons of mana. Even with the extra Jump Tossers they fought, there was a rest between each fight - at least ten minutes and twice it was thirty - but it was still incredible.

Notii knew enough to understand just how impressive it was. Dav was stealing about half of all of the Jump Tossers’ teleports, which meant he had to be able to manage it on a fraction of the mana used to create the effect; otherwise, he’d have long since run out of mana. It was possible he simply had a way to recover that much mana, but that was far less likely than simply not using as much as the Jump Tossers did, because the Jump Tossers were the ones paying for the Ability in the first place.

That was an Ability that could form the backbone of an entire Sphere, even become a Signature, and Dav was using it as a utility Ability? It seemed backwards, but Notii couldn’t deny that it was working. Somehow, that made it even worse.

Not that the others were any better. Ci’an could freeze a Jump Tosser in place while it was being hit and let others simply kill it; if Dav wasn’t able to disrupt the Jump Tossers’ jumps, Ci’an’s stuns would probably have worked nearly as well. Xin’ri had powerful attacks of all elements; even if she had no other Abilities, that was enough to make her notable, and it definitely wasn’t a coincidence that quite a bit of the entire team’s gear had a link back to Xin’ri similar to the link of a Professional to equipment they made. Most people wouldn’t be able to see that, but Notii was not most people. There were reasons that he was the coordinator for the large team, even though his direct combat capability was poor.

It was almost like they’d bundled two or three teams’ worth of Abilities into one four-person team. None of the Abilities were individually stronger than … no, that wasn’t true. None of the attacks were stronger than a third upgrade individual could achieve with the same support and item usage, but they stacked them together in a way that made them seem closer to fourth upgrade. Notii was fairly confident that they could have held down an entire Pillar on their own, just like a fourth upgrade team, even though they weren’t fourth upgrade.

That didn’t mean they’d be able to complete a full set of fourth upgrade Challenges. Notii still wasn’t certain that was possible. If anyone could do it, they could … but he was still going to recommend that they wait for an Event. It was nice that that might help him join an assault on a Branch Lord, but the real reason was that it was safer. If they wanted to get the appropriate enhancement for their World Tree door, they could always complete a Challenge on the fourth branch as a team later.

It did leave him with a problem, though. Should he send them out again to help the Pillars around them or should he keep them close? If he sent them out, it wouldn’t be four hours of intermittent fighting followed by a several-hour rest; it would be potentially eight hours with very little rest. There really would be no option but to have them rest during the seventh Fall.

His two original teams could handle a single Fall. They were well rested and that was the reason you took in three small teams, after all; so that one could rest while the others worked. He’d been depending on the Flying Stars entirely too much because they made it far easier. It would be the seventh Fall, but that only made it more important to have them rested for the eighth.

If he wanted to have a sixth Bonus Round, he probably needed to send the Flying Stars out to help other teams. Jump Tossers were one of the monster types most likely to force a failure because of just how elusive they were if you didn’t have a way to lock down their Jumping, and most teams didn’t. Every team that could would be sending out people to help those they could reach.

Notii grumbled under his breath, then had Sophia call one of her large Echos to carry the group. He sent Mareth with them, since the sparrow was getting along well with them and had the experience to interpret the feel of the Lifeweb to find the teams that needed help and were too busy to ask for it.

The wave ended more than three hours later, with twenty-three minutes left on the timer to the next Fall. The World Tree took pity on them and granted them the extra eight minutes to prepare for the seventh Fall instead of setting the timer to fifteen minutes the way it had for the previous Falls that were completed before the timer ran out.

Twenty-two Pillars fell on that Fall. It was the worst by far and left them with only two hundred and seventy-six Pillars standing. If they lost more than twenty Pillars between the next two Falls, they’d lose the Event - even though they’d done well up until the Jump Tossers arrived. Notii hoped that it was simply the weaker Pillars falling. They still had a good chance but they couldn’t afford another Fall like that one.

Most of that time elapsed before the Flying Stars returned, huddled together on the back of Sophia’s Echo. They looked absolutely exhausted and Sophia even stumbled when she hopped to the ground.

Notii’s nose twitched as he shook his head. “You should have returned earlier if you were this tired.”

“Couldn’t,” Sophia answered, then yawned. “We were fine ‘til the final group, but … there were nine of them by the time we got there. We saw them take out two Pillars while we flew in. We weren’t the only team fighting them, but no one else could lock them down. So Dav and I did. Everything he didn’t usurp I broke. It was a lot, but it worked.”

Notii blinked. She what?

No. No, he didn’t need to ask that right now. “Go sleep.”

“But there’s another Fall,” Sophia protested.

“And you’re asleep on your feet.” Notii watched her sway slightly as her foot caught on a rough patch of ground and she overcorrected tiredly. He pointed towards the Pillar where her tent stood. “Seriously. Sleep. We can handle the next Fall; you won’t be worth anything until you’ve had some rest. We’ll wake you for the last one. It’ll be almost eight hours from now; someone will capture the last monster and hold them if they can to give everyone time to rest.”

“Right,” Sophia said. She took two steps towards her tent, then paused. “Should I leave my Domain up? It won’t have the active components, but it does some stuff no matter what. It’ll just be a sphere, too, I can’t shape it while I’m sleeping.”

“I don’t care, as long as you sleep,” Notii told her. It wasn’t worth arguing. The fact that she could restrain her aura - and therefore her Domain - while sleeping was … well, it was probably to be expected of a Domain specialist. Most people were good at using the tools they used all the time, after all.

Sophia nodded, then pulled a couple of handfuls of feathers out of nowhere and threw them into the air. They floated away from her, followed by several more handfuls, before she stopped and headed into her tent.

Notii had Lith’e reinforce the lanes while they waited for the next Fall. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but his guess was that it would be a minion rush of some sort; that was almost exactly the opposite of the Jump Tossers and both of the last two Falls were small numbers of difficult enemies.

Bimeth bet that it would be something that could strike a large area, because they hadn’t had a Fall like that yet. His guess was that the minion rush would happen on the eighth Fall, along with the controllers they both expected. He was even willing to bet an aurichalc flower on it.

A flower that he handed to Notii moments after the Fall began, even before the first meteor landed. The sky was absolutely filled with falling rocks, most of which were small, but there were so many of them it became difficult to see the sky.

Notii watched as the first one opened up. It was like watching a flower open, except that when the lowest petal hit the ground, a six-legged creature made of shiny bronze skittered out. The one after that had wheels, like a tiny cart, and the one after that looked like it was made of stacked balls. Notii saw all of those repeated, along with creations that looked like the gears of a watch and something that looked like a walking pile of rectangular blocks. Most of the metal creations were no more than a foot and a half tall, but some, maybe one in twenty, were twice that height.

They were clockworks. Clockworks came in a bunch of different varieties; they could imitate almost anything. These were the weakest form imaginable; they had nothing going for them except numbers. Of course, there was always that old saying.

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Fortunately, the tall ones didn’t seem to exert any control over the small ones. They simply all rushed towards the pillar, forming a moving carpet that wanted to smash everyone and then knock over the Pillars.

They should be easy to kill. A moving wave like this always was; it wasn’t supposed to be hard. It was supposed to drain resources and push people into making mistakes like running themselves out of mana. It was the reason that everyone who intentionally entered an Event brought things to restore mana, control where enemies could go, and create explosions that could wipe out weak creatures in a wide area.

Four hours was a very, very long time when the only breaks you got were the ones you made. This was when someone like Notii would really shine, because he could tell when someone needed a break or remind them to pace themselves. Even Tellix would pace himself in the face of a horde like this.

Notii had Lith’e turn most of the lanes into cul-de-sacs where the Pillar could be seen but not easily reached. That would gather the clockworks up in conveniently elliptical areas as they charged towards the Pillar and then stalled looking for easy access to move closer. Some would climb the vine-walls but most would be trapped long enough to kill.

The clockworks followed the plan perfectly. There was a reason it was a standard plan taught in school; it worked on dumb enemies. The clockworks wouldn’t learn and would simply repeat their predecessors’ mistakes.

They started with only a handful of enemies in the bulbs at the end of the lanes. When those were easy to kill, they allowed more and more to accumulate, killing the ones that escaped with cheap projectiles and then using a larger, more expensive Ability when there were enough clockworks to make it worth it. No matter how many they gathered, they always all died, which was odd; normally, some of them would survive.

And then came the time when Tellix shouted for everyone to come look at a cul-de-sac he hadn’t cleared. It had the most clockworks yet … and the ones closest to the vines that blocked the Pillar were no longer moving.