Broken Lands

Notii snorted. “Did you forget that they’re Earth as well as Fire? They will notice an earthen dam even less than they’d notice the vines! They can almost walk straight through it. A pit might slow them down a little, but I don’t know. They might be able to walk up the side. Anyway, the big one is so big that-”

A crash came from the direction of the giant golem. Notii looked over just in time to see it fall, broken into pieces. A streak of swirling black fire shot away from it up into the sky, headed towards their Pillar. Notii had no idea what to do as it shimmered and seemed to resolve into the shape of a man covered in black and dark red flame. The flame died as he dropped in the sky, slowing as he grew closer to the ground. A cloak of purple feathers flickered with lightning as it flared around him to slow his fall.

Even before he landed not far from Notii, the Archon knew who he was. Dav.

“I thought you were the sensible one?” Notii asked the human. “What did you just do?”

Dav shrugged. “You were taking too long, so I went to look at the golem. It had a pretty obvious weakness, that light-eye, so decided to see what was there. Did you know that there’s a crystalline core that powers it buried in its chest cavity?”

Notii blinked. That was true, technically. If you were strong enough, you aimed for the chest to try to destroy it. The problem was that it was reactive, able to attack anything that went after the crystalline core with far more power than any of its attacks other than the light-cone it could create from the “eye” just above the core, and the cone was slow. The reactive strikes weren’t. “You have to be almost immune to fire to make going after that worth it. Well, fire and earth but it’s usually the heat that gets you from that attack with a fire-and-earth Cleansing Golem.”

Dav shrugged. “Sophia could have cut the attack. I can’t do that, so I stole it. It turns out that the golem … well, the area around the core isn’t actually as resistant to its own heat as it should be; it was melting itself. I just accelerated the process.”

He lifted his hand from his side and presented an irregularly faceted nearly spherical crystal that seemed to hold swirling fire and magma. “The core wasn’t damaged by the fire, which made it relatively easy to remove. After that, the golem just sort of fell apart. Easy enough.”

Notii stared at the golem’s power source for a long moment. “Are you all insane? You went in there without support?”

“I had support,” Dav countered. “As much support as I would have outside. Ci’an and Xin’ri were watching; Sophia was talking to you, but her Domain was active and I could have yelled for help if I needed it. It was pretty obvious that it was only third upgrade, so that’s enough. Sure, it was tough for third upgrade, but there’s always a weakness. It was only about as tough as the stuff near the center of the Maze. The overall encounter’s scaled for a larger group like this, but a lot of that’s the time you have to be able to keep fighting and the sheer number of monsters, they aren’t actually any more powerful than other stuff we’ve dealt with. So yeah, a hard counter is a hard counter, and I was pretty sure I had a counter to the golem.”

Notii shook his head. That was not at all a normal way to look at the Cleansing Golems. If they were normal bosses, maybe, but Cleansing Golems? They were boogeymen from children’s stories.

Archons’ children’s stories. Dav wasn’t an Archon. That was something he had to remind himself.

“Do you know if I need a special container for the golem’s core to keep it usable?” Dav asked. “I’d hate to go to that much effort and then not be able to sell it. Oh, come to think of it, this is the first real treasure from the Event, isn’t it? How do you want to split it?”

Notii’s eyes widened in horror. “Don’t break the core!”

He didn’t know what it would do, but his guess was that it would explode. It might just leak molten rock everywhere … which would be only slightly better. Molten rock was very hot. Whatever it did, it would likely hurt Dav badly if he didn’t repeat whatever he used to protect himself from the Cleansing Golem.

“Not what I meant,” Dav clarified with a smile. “I meant we can sell it and split the aurichalc. That’s what you do for these things, right? We really should have talked about it earlier.”

“It’s usually by contribution,” Notii answered weakly. There was no real doubt which team had contributed the most to their success: the Flying Stars. Normally, the highest contribution team was the one who organized everything and had the coordinator; that wasn’t the reason Tellix grabbed them, but it certainly didn’t hurt. This time, though, it looked like they’d be walking away with only a small fraction of the rewards. They’d have to negotiate what that meant after the Event was over, because they weren’t a regular large team, but Notii knew his position was weak.

At least the rewards would be larger overall than usual. They were definitely going to get seven Reward Rounds, maybe even eight. Something special was supposed to happen with the eighth Reward Round, but that was so rare that it might well be nothing more than the rumors of the greedy. If the final set of monsters in an Event that went well was always something like the Cleansing Golems, Notii could understand the rarity. It was a huge step up in difficulty. Well, a huge step up in difficulty for everyone except Dav. They were definitely elites, and Notii really regretted the fact that they were moving on. Lower rewards or not, flying in the wake of elites was a good way to progress quickly.

“We can split it evenly,” Dav stated firmly as he tucked the fiery glowing sphere in a pocket, where it vanished without leaving a lump, more evidence of how wealthy the Flying Stars were; only the wealthy would put the money it had to take to give a small space like a pocket a space-expanding enchantment. “I assume you can handle the small golems while I deal with the big ones elsewhere? Unless the other Pillars don’t need help again?”

“They do,” Notii answered without thinking about it. He could already hear some of them asking for help. It wasn’t the closest Pillars, of course; they had a respite because Dav destroyed the Cleansing Golem closest to them. He gave directions, then watched as Dav requested one of the flying lizards from Sophia because his flight was limited. She insisted that he take Ci’an and Xin’ri with him, which was certainly a precaution Notii could agree with.

When she checked with Notii to see if he wanted her to stay or go, he took a long moment to think about it before he sent her with the rest of her team. If her basic ability to cause increased harm to the golems worked over the Lifeweb the way he thought it did, her presence wouldn’t change things at their Pillar, but it might tip the odds in Dav’s favor. He wasn’t an Archon, so she had to be close to him.

It wasn’t until the team was gone that it really registered that Dav offered to split the rewards evenly. Notii wasn’t certain if that meant Dav was generous or if it simply meant that he didn’t recognize just how useful the Flying Stars had been.

Notii set his remaining team members up so that they could easily handle the smaller golems. His original ideas were more than enough for that; Lith’e’s pollen was plenty to make the slow golems ebay for Tellix to kill.

Once that was done, he could afford to be distracted for most of the rest of the Fall with the question of whether or not he should correct Dav’s assumptions. If he didn’t, the Flying Stars might be angry and leave when they found out he’d cheated them, even though they suggested it. If he did, his own group would get lower rewards from this Event. It really came down to how the Flying Stars would think about the treasure division and how long they were going to stay. If they were going to move on no matter what, Notii ought to take them for every bit he could, even though that felt really sketchy. If they were going to stay a bit longer, accepting lower rewards now in exchange for working with them longer made more sense.

It felt really odd to be on the lower end of the treasure split. Notii normally tried to be in a situation where it was about equal; carrying another team might get you a bigger split, but it was more work. On the other side, if you could manage it at all, it was best to carry your own weight. The only time it was usually worth being carried was when you were ready to end your career as a Called and wanted to start your Professional life a little higher in the Moonlit Branches.

The exception to that was elite teams like the Flying Stars. They often worked with other elites, forming eight-person large teams instead of twelve-person ones, but when they didn’t they were a huge boost for whoever they were willing to work with.

They were an even bigger boost if they were willing to share some of the insights and training that made them elites, and Notii thought that might be possible with the Flying Stars. Unlike many other elite teams, they were happy to talk about what they did.

It wasn’t just Sophia explaining the enchantment she placed around the Pillar for Mareth’s curiosity. Notii knew he’d seen Xin’ri explain some of the finer details of their equipment to Mareth, while Ci’an and Bimet talked about their offensive Abilities. Notii wasn’t certain exactly what they talked about, because he wasn’t sure what an “inverted attention loop” or a “stuttering vision lock” was, but they both seemed to know. Dav spent a lot of time talking to Ssssit about his invisibility, too.

Notii glanced around. He’d just realized that he hadn’t even thought about Ssssit for a while; he wasn’t certain how long. He hadn’t even considered using the stealthy snake since the aht’ko. He wouldn’t have been very useful, probably, but he still should have thought about him.

Did that mean he was better at concealing himself or was Notii just forgetful?

Eh, he’d probably just forgotten. It wasn’t like Ssssit would have been all that useful. He’d have thought of his teammate if it mattered.

Cleansing Golems fell across the entire area. This time, Notii was fairly confident that there wasn’t anyone else doing what the Flying Stars were doing; no one else would be ridiculous enough to harvest their cores. Smashing them, on the other hand, was entirely likely. There probably were other teams traveling around to kill the large Cleansing Golems.

There was no other explanation for the fact that, despite how slow the golems moved, the Fall ended with the death of the last golem just over two hours after the last meteor fell. Normally, several teams would have tried to keep one alive long enough to run the timer down and give people a chance to rest, but these were Cleansing Golems. Everyone knew the stories of how Cleansing Golems could grow in strength, spread, and escape any boundaries placed on them. Killing them was always the right choice.

Only four Pillars fell during the eighth Fall, which was something close to a miracle. A miracle Notii knew the reason for: Sophia made it far easier to kill the Cleansing Golems while Dav took out a significant fraction of the far more dangerous large golems.