Worthy Core

Lady Nalina Evervein isn't sure whether to grimace or grin as the Domain soldiers begin pouring forth. On one hand she'd been hoping that the Domain would underestimate their defenses, and come at them with something a little weaker than they'd brought. Had the assault only included half as many soldiers and monsters this would barely even be a battle.

On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of fight the dwarven noblewoman's been spoiling for all her life. She never would have expected it - although really, who would expect to one day be defending a dungeon floor against an assault by a hundred denizens? But the chaos of it all gets her heart beating in a way that no normal dungeon fight had ever managed. Part of her isn't even all that concerned about her own safety in the midst of all of this. After all, it would be a glorious way to die, if her time should happen to come amidst such a struggle.

Unfortunately the dungeon had seen fit to place her in command of this battle, and she's definitely not about to fall and let her soldiers go leaderless - not until she's bled the Domain dry, at least. So after cleaning her spear of monstrous arachnid chunks, the woman refocuses and begins issuing new orders. "Don't get too distracted by the damn fliers! There ain't enough of em to take these walls! Keep your focus on the bastards trying to make the climb! Take out every mage you see!"

Each stretch of wall - a bit of dungeon-made stone raised up to cover the areas between climbing paths - is manned by about half a dozen soldiers and Challengers. Almost all of those members of the Rainlander army who had retreated back to the dungeon are fighting here now, with Rainlander adventurers filling in the gaps. It's far from all of the mortal defenders residing within the dungeon, of course. As part of making this a show of Rainlander pride the Valleylander soldiers were keeping out of it, as well as other Challengers including the Supreme-tier Scarlet Eagle team. They could have certainly helped out, were they present...but even Nalina can't argue against the possibility of the Domain having some devastating trick up their sleeve. If the defenders lose this battle, then at least it will be in the knowledge that they still have several well-defended floors left to fall back to.

To her delight, though, none of the tricks she's seen so far seem that bad. Poking her head around one of the raised walls, it looks as if the full enemy force has left the treeline behind and begun charging towards the cliff, which means that it is time for Nalina to trigger one of her own surprises. "Silverbloom!"

One of her companions, the elven Arcane Sorcerer, appears next to her as if he'd been there the whole time. "Yes, Nalina?"

"Gah! I hate when y'do that!" Shaking her head, the dwarf quickly refocuses. "They're committed! Light up the treeline!"

The man grins at his orders. "Normally I would hesitate to start a forest fire on even a minor scale. But given that the trees will be fine again in a few hours, I suppose just this once..."

When the Challengers had begun planning their defense alongside the dungeon staff, the issue of the dungeon and its ability to create traps was a major part of those plans. As always, the rules limiting just how dangerous a trap could be were a major headache to work around. The trails up the cliffside had been trapped, of course, but they were relatively obvious things with tripwires or pressure plates. One idea which had come up however was the idea of traps that had no trigger at all. If a dungeon wants to put hidden blade traps along a mandatory path, there's only so many it can place, and they can only be of a certain level of deadliness.

However if those blades were just, say, stuck to a wall or ceiling, away from where someone might wander into it? Well, then that's just an edgy form of decor.

But what the dungeon rules didn't account for is traps which have no built-in trigger, but can still be triggered by a very precisely cast spell. Which is exactly what Silverbloom does now, as the elf makes his way to the wall. Waving his staff over the edge, he bathes the lower level of the forest in...a completely harmless squealing noise. Irritating, definitely. Distracting, for sure - Nalina can spot several Domain soldiers who assume they're under some sort of sonic attack, and halt their assault to cover their ears. Some of whom get filled with arrows as they stop out in the open, to her delight.

But what's far more delightful is when that precise frequency of sound destroys the manually-placed alchemical sparkers placed in the branches of every tree on the lower level. More precisely, placed right next to a dungeon-made explosive. In a single moment hundreds of square feet of forest are shaken by a wave of demolitions, blasting apart the treeline. Sadly, few Domain soldiers are immediately hurt by the attack despite the flashy devastation. Even without a trigger, the dungeon had to massively reduce the strength of the bombs in order to make so many.

But they are very good at setting the rather flammable trees on fire.

In a matter of moments, the Domain force finds themselves stuck between a forest fire and a hard place. With Rainlanders at the top of said hard place, shooting them with arrows and lightning bolts. Needless to say, there is a small impact on their unit morale as each squad realizes what position they're in.

Bursting through the burning treeline, the orange-scaled draconic leading the attack begins shouting out orders of her own, clearly recognizing as well that her forces are in a dangerous spot. "Ignore the flames! Keep pressing forward! Fliers, target this section of the wall!"

It's a challenge that Nalina isn't about to let go unanswered, and she calls out to her closest companions to help her do so. "The flying beasties are coming in! My team, with me!" Silverbloom follows along as she dashes over towards the next section of wall, although where she enhances her legs with a burst of magic, the elf shows off by taking a gliding leap from one parapet to the next. As they arrive they meet the other two members of their team coming from the other direction - the paladin, Red Daylinta, and Tinter Gloomroot, the master of mystic shadows. Readying her warhammer, Red frowns at the demons and dungeon monsters heading in their direction.

"You three gonna save any for me?"

The half-elf Tinter grins back at her. "Maybe you can take charge of making sure their corpses don't crash into us." With that said the man waves his wand, and the dim twilight of Floor Four suddenly turns even darker. The invaders who'd been grouping up for an assault find themselves trapped within a cloud of substanceless smoke, sending their formations in every direction as most of them attempt to regain their eyesight.

The dungeon monsters who were part of that group seem to be a little more single-minded, however. An orange, fanged wyvern-like monster shoots forward with a roar, while a monstrosity made of sharpened bone follows soon after, silent save for the clacking of its limbs against each other. Even its insectoid wings are nothing more than spines of bone, leaving pure magic as the only explanation for its ability to fly.

Neither of them manage to do much to intimidate the retainers of House Highbranch, however. Without wasting a moment Nalina assigns targets. "Silverbloom, handle that pile of bones, would yeh? I'll take the flying cat beastie."

"As you - whup!" The elf's response is cut short as Nalina herself suddenly launches into the air, courtesy of her Supreme-tier body enhancements. As a spearwoman, the manuever could be described as...risky. The dwarf is left soaring not only over the parapet but over the heads of at least a dozen Domain soldiers below, and with nearly no way to control her trajectory. Should she miss her target, the woman is likely to land in the currently-aflame forest, or simply get picked out of the air by enemy attacks.

The hybrid wyvern is clearly not expecting a dwarven cannonball assault, however, and the beast's surprise barely gives it time to try and roll its way out of her path. It's not enough - as Nalina begins to pass it by her spear juts out, harpooning the beast in one of its shoulders, and just like that the woman is now along for the ride. The yowling beast continues to try and roll and spin to dislodge her, but in its distraction it only continues to fly further upward and away from its allies. Going by the sound of dwarvish laughter echoing across the floor, this is exactly what Nalina was hoping for.

Sighing, Silverbloom refocuses on the insectoid undead, the monster even now preparing to land on the side of the constructed defenses. "I see no organs or flesh...insects don't even have bones, there's no proper anatomy to this thing at all! Skipping fire, lighting, probably too dumb for illusions...frost it is, I think. Highfalls Hailstorm, encase my foe!" With a dramatic flourish of his staff a storm begins to form above the man's head, with clouds of mist and flurries of snowflakes, but what comes out of the first cloud to finish forming appears to be a massive snowball. The magically conjured frost launches straight at the incoming monster, and although the impact doesn't do much damage, the snow and ice does latch on to one of the abomination's limbs rather solidly.

This first attack is quickly followed up by a dozen more, most of which hit, and all of which begin weighing down the monster with expanding growths of ice. Although flapping its wings appears to be more of a style choice than a physical necessity, as the act becomes harder to perform the monster does actually lose some of its agility. Rather than gracefully landing on the side of the dungeon walls as a fly might, it instead slams into the stone with all the grace of a drunken junebug. One of its front scythe-like limbs snaps off from the impact alone, and the others find themselves scrabbling for purchase. That becomes a little harder as Silverbloom casts his followup spell.

"Oversized Bug Smasher." The conjured storm is replaced by a conjured boulder several times larger than the elf is, except instead of forming above the man's own head, this time it takes shape above the monster's. As the spell completes gravity finally reasserts itself, and the falling stone shatters many of the frozen bones to pieces. Not to mention a few unfortunate kobolds who were attempting to climb up that section of cliff.

Glancing over the side of the wall, Red tssks. "C'mon, a few more feet and I could've gotten a hit in on that one! You gotta let me - whoa!" The paladin's griping is interrupted by the near-impact of a blue-scaled draconic attempting to slam into her, and as she dodges to the side the invader barely halts himself before sliding off of the wall. He quickly rights himself though, and as he stands up Red sees that the man holds in one hand a hammer almost as large as the weapon she carries with both.

"Ha! Almost got me there - and that's a nice toy you got. Know how to use it?"

The draconic raises his weapon into the air, charging it with crackling electricity. "More than any lickspittle of the gods does, for certain! Behold the power of the dragons, human!"

Seeing that Red's found herself a duel, Silverbloom and Gloomroot simply scoot off to the side. Tinter pauses to hurl a tentacle-spawning sphere of darkness at one recovering squad of demons, before whispering to his companion.

"How many swings do you think she'll let him have?"

"A draconic?" Silverbloom shakes his head. "She's going to draw this one out. We may have to step in if she gets too distracted."

Spotting two more soaring draconics attempting to recover the momentum of their aerial assault teams, Tinter grunts. "At least they brought enough for everyone..."