Chapter 155: Shield Domes and Damaged Daughters
Bilorial sits up in the ruined wheat field, soft afternoon sunlight dancing across the grain around him as he chugs back health potions as fast as Mysa and Raenly can produce them, pressing them into his hands as he wince at the bitter aftertaste of each one.
"I haven’t been hit like that since the Curse wars." he mutters, "Twenty years since I’ve been out on my back like that. Syraleth must be using all of her heart-core for this."
Beside him, Mika groans, sprawled across the dirt, clutching her head, which was still ringing faintly having taken the brunt of Bilorial weight during their crash to earth.
She slowly sits up, wiping a streak of blood from her split lip. "I am never... doing that again. Almost wound up back in heaven."
"My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience," Bilorial says solemnly as he rises and dusts off his suit, "But thank you no less for the assist. A guardian angel if ever there was one.."
"You hit me like a demonic battering ram, Bilorial." Mike scowls. "You weigh a ton."
The demon general gasps, genuinely wounded. "I shan’t suffer your slander while I’m still bleeding out." he snaps, "I’ll have you know I watch my weight very carefully. I simply happen to be big-boned."
"Those bones almost caved my head in."
Mysa stared across the field at the two motionless, chanting kitsune twins, pointing at the duo. "Those foxes are turning this whole battle into a farce with those illusions. Somebody needs to shut them down."
"They’re Kitsune actually." Raenly corrects her, "Naturally attuned to illusion magic, you know."
"That’s not the point!" Mysa hisses. "We need to stop them."
"Oh, they will pay dearly, my feline-friend," Bilorial says, groaning as he stretches his back, and twists his hips. Both responding audibly. "What do you say, Miss Mika... shall we get back into it?"
"Thought you’d never ask." Mika says as she cracks her neck, rolling both shoulders, wings snapping open behind her with a sharp rustle of feathers. "Watch this."
"No! Wait! ..."
But she’s gone before Bilorial can finish his warning.
She rockets off the ground in a streak of blinding divine light, wings snapped flat against the wind, her halo trailing a bright, flickering afterglow behind her like a comet’s tail as she bullets low across ruined field and broken bodies, scattering smoke and startled soldiers alike in her wake, closing the distance to the kitsune twins in a matter seconds.
She meets a wall instead.
Mika hits a layer of invisible magic and a dome flares briefly around the centre of the battlefield, a faint oil-slick shimmer rippling outward in concentric rings from the point of collision like a stone dropped into still pond. The impact sends a deafening thud rolling across the entire field, loud enough to make distant soldiers flinch, loud enough that Penelo feels it in her own teeth from three hundred yards away, flinching as she’s bent over Lula, paws pouring green, healing magic into the dragon-kins injured body..
Mika drops out of the air in a motionless, boneless heap of feathers and singed light, crumpling into the mud without so much as a twitch, one wing bent at an angle that makes Vuvi wince.
Bilorial, Mysa, and Raenly all recoil in perfect, silent unison.
"...It’s probably heavily shielded." Bilorial finally mutters, shaking his head.
Across the fields, a fresh barrage of magical orbs erupts from the rotating glyphs above the mages. Fire, ice, lightning, all tangled together in one screaming volley of destruction, slamming into a shimmering wall of violet light that Veena had thrown up, the impact rattling through her whole body and she feeds her magic-shield with her demonic energy. She grits her teeth, blood trickling freely from her nose, arms trembling and legs braced wide as she strains to hold the barrier against blow after blow of elemental and concussive force, the ground beneath her boots cracking under the sheer weight of what she’s absorbing on her teammates behalf.
Behind her, Raikya hauls an injured Lula up onto Frostlick’s back.
"I’m fine," Lula insists, wincing through gritted, blood-stained teeth. "One health potion and I’m back in this. Good as new!"
"Get her to the carriages," Veena shouts over her shoulder, voice strained with effort. "Penelo can heal her!"
"On it!" Raikya vaults up behind Lula, holding her steady against her chest as Frostlick leaps into a full sprint, paws tearing up great clouds of dust and earth behind them. "We’ll be ripping enemies apart together again in no time, I promise."
Above the gathered monks and mages in the centre of the battlefield, explosions ripple across the shield dome in a thundering cascade of light and color, each one blooming and fading against the barrier like fireworks hitting glass.
Syraleth watches it all unfold, thoroughly delighted, entirely pleased, clapping slowly at Vuvi and Pip as they circle the perimeter.
Pip jets through the air on twin columns of pressurized air, one arm locked around Vuvi to keep her steady against the wind, the other swinging wildly, ripping rock and stone clean out of the earth around them and hurling them against the shimmering wall while Vuvi lobs alchemical grenade after alchemical grenade, each one detonating in colorful blooms of smoke and glittering fire.
None of their effort leaves so much as a scratch behind, the monks and mages inside the dome only chant louder in response to their attacks.
"You’re both doing wonderfully," Syraleth calls down, ecstatic. "In fact... here, let me make this a little easier for you."
She whistles, sharp and clear and the two kitsune twins bow their heads and begin a fresh, low incantation, hands clasped together, fingers flicking between sorcery signals in perfect unison.
And in response, across the entire ruined battlefield, the Syraleth’s soldiers begin dissolving into smoke. One by one, then dozens, then hundreds at a time. Entire ranks and legions flickering out of existence like candles snuffed by an unseen wind, leaving behind the occasional flesh-and-blood fighter. The remaining soldiers quickly run for the shield dome, filtering in behind the monks in perfect formation.
Maribelle and Xenara keep swinging at empty air for a full three seconds before either of them notices the enemy’s simply vanishing into puffs of swirling smoke around, both skidding to a halt into the churned mud, confused, breathless, suddenly surrounded by a cold, eerie silence.