Demi stood on the lower city walls beside the other defenders, spawning another wave of spores. She stared at her prestige power with a special kind of hatred. The week long cooldown was literally hours away. But they didn’t even have minutes.
Almost every powerful player but her was out there fighting in the mayhem. She tried not to feel guilty. Tried to remind herself she had probably killed more demons in the past few hours than anyone but Mason and maybe Blake.
Her area-covering magic was like a mine field that didn’t run out mines. Flush with power from her divine title and Nexus buffs, she’d covered nearly a whole side, land and air, with deadly spores.
But her mana was getting dangerously…wait, what in the name of god was happening to her mana?
[Affected by power: Summer Wind. Your mana will be drained and transferred until it is gone, you get out of range, or the channeler is stopped. Aura effect. Created by: Greensea Prophet Nighteyes. His location is marked.]
Demi turned to see a centaur on a hill, swirling with purple mist, his staff raised in the air. She was temporarily speechless.
The disturbingly calm and powerful elven arch-mage beside her suddenly looked a lot less calm. He turned to stare at the same time, mouth hanging equally wordlessly a few moments.
“There’s…a powerful caster. Draining our mana. All of us. It has to be stopped. Now. We have no more than a minute. Or we should withdraw through the…”
The elven portals vanished, possibly drained by the same effect.
Demi almost messaged Carl or tried to blast the creature before she looked again at the power message. She knew this creature. She’d been with Mason when he met Nighteyes. It was his centaur ally, a creature he trusted maybe more than most of the humans.
She read the alert again and again. Drained. And transferred.
“Wait.” She put a hand on the elf’s forearm and stared up at Mason, closing her eyes to feel him through their bond.
“There is no time,” said the arch-mage, almost panicked now. “Every second costs us.”
Demi heard player casters, goblin wizards, and orc shamans calling out in equal panic all over the wall. The power was probably giving them an idea of where the drain was coming from, too. But Demi saw the motes of mana now swirling around her husband, and smiled.
“He’s on our side. He’s helping Mason.” She turned to the elf, knowing it was a crazy thing to say and ask. “Trust me, please. Do everything you can to protect that creature. With whatever time and mana you have left. Tell the others not to fight it. He’s draining the demons, too. There’s a reason. I know it.”
The elf blinked as he stared. With a resigned nod, he turned to his kin and spoke rushed commands. More portals started flaring up all over the place, the elves rushing through.
With no idea what else to do, Demi put a hand on the child growing in her womb, looked up at Mason, and prayed to the great spirit of her people.
**
“Fuckin’ hold it!”
Becky slid backwards in her personal bubble as the demon mountain floated ever onwards. She stood there with the line of tanks as it advanced, not sure if they were all about to die.
The aura hit them, and stopped. The eggheads at the back were shouting and inspecting, and pretty soon the Swede was yelling about ‘total energy’ and ‘movement limited by destructive power’ and something about a sliding scale.
“Will you shut the fuck up and tell us what in the hell to do!”
Erik puffed up and let out an exasperated sound.
“If you stay there, it can’t move!”
Becky turned away and put the man out of her mind. She could sure as shit do that. She tried not to hate herself for not having her wall, but knew she’d had no choice, and figured it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Force smashed into her. The demon’s aura struck like a big wall of hammers, a sound like a bell ringing as every tank spasmed or slid or clung to their shields. Then it came again. And again. But the demon didn’t move.
Its aura was like a ‘damage over time’ spell, apparently, delivered by an invisible bull. It just sat there and rammed into the tanks in waves, smashing them physically and magically again and again, every few seconds.
“Well I’m wearin’ down already!” John shouted, aura crackling and flickering with energy as he took another hit.
He wasn’t the only one. Becky saw tanks dropping to their knees, or getting blasted away, thrown out of the aura. There were supports behind them trying to boost mana or heal or restore their energy. But it was like fighting a damn hurricane. Only Chinua looked like he could stand there all day, unmoved and right smack in the middle.
“A little longer, my friends.”
Light flashed in the dark as Alex stepped up beside the tanks. Becky was about to tell him to get the fuck out when the aura smashed again and the healer cracked like an egg.
She flinched as she watched his face flatten, one of his arms rend out of joint. But the crazy bastard snapped right back together, nose and arm popping up like you’d reversed the video. Blood dripped down his chin as he held up a hand, the same light covering the tanks in a wave going back the other direction. Becky shook her head in wonder.
“You crazy fuckin’ Russian.”
He looked at her like it was just a God damn Tuesday.
“I am Belarusian.”
She met the man’s eyes and grinned, ready to swap her aegis to him anyway if she ever had enough damn…
Her energy re-filled instantly. Which was good, because apparently her mana was almost entirely gone and getting…drained?
[Affected by power: Summer Wind. Your mana will be drained and transferred until it is gone, you get out of range, or the channeler is stopped. Aura effect. Created by: Greensea Prophet Nighteyes. His location is marked.]
She didn’t know what the fuck any of that meant. But in all the excitement she’d apparently missed it. So, that was great. And since there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, she just held up her shield and braced herself for another kick in the cunt.
“It’s comin’, boys!”
The aura slammed them again. Another tank went flying.
“The damage spreads evenly!” The Swede shouted. “Anyone with a defensive power, get in the aura! Do it now!”
That was probably pretty easy to say when you were an egghead at the back. But sure as shit, a bunch of melee players came running in. A few met Becky’s eyes and gave her a nod. She hoped they didn’t get killed in the first hit.
“Here it comes. Get ready!”
She winced, despite herself, which made her mad. The aura slammed down and clenched her jaw, this time feeling like touching the worst electric fence ever. John laughed.
“Ha! That one gave me mana!”
Becky didn’t know why it was funny, but it was. She started laughing. And pretty soon they were all laughing, crushed up against a giant monster trying to destroy them all. Mankind’s last line of defense pushed against death together, and laughed.
**
[Apex Predator: You are the target of power: Summer Wind. A positive or negative mana related abyssal spell. Do you want to accept it?]
Mason squinted at the line of green text in his vision. Or was it blue? He was pretty sure it was Apex Predator asking him about something. But it was kind of hard to see when everything was covered in the brightest light ever. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.
Yalor’s champion was now a burning effigy. The entire undead monstrosity was crackling like roasted pork, skin charred black, flesh roasting with the third or fourth worst smell of the apocalypse. Mason just kept draining, and kept on channeling.
Somewhere down on the ground, Cerebus was theoretically still holding his fellow God from interfering. Or at least Mason assumed that’s why the thing had stopped moving. He didn’t really care why. It was right in his crosshairs, and he didn’t intend to stop blasting until one of them dropped.
He renewed his mana as fast as possible, trying to limit the spell’s flow to something he could sustain. But what he needed was more power. He forced himself to try—using Share Pain liberally and transferring some of the belt’s punishment, watching his mana hover at fifty percent as Solar Wrath kept pounding.
He hoped Blake was somewhere nearby helping, but he’d lost track of him completely. On the plus side, it also seemed like the primal lords and flyers had decided to keep the hell away. This seemed…odd.
And was maybe Blake’s doing. Or something to do with Cerebus. But for whatever reason the battle had seemed to shift to some other center, leaving Mason almost alone to make the worst barbecue in the history of man.
Even so, he kept on cooking. The pillar of light breaking through the clouds was getting wider, swirling back and forth as if to give the champion a nice, even roasting. His mana drained faster and faster, and he ramped up his belt drain to compensate, feeling his body war with the damage.
It felt like it was sucking the moisture out of him. And when he realized he was dripping blood down his face he supposed he knew why. Didn’t matter. He could take it. He ignored the animal whines through his bond, and kept on going.
It was maybe a minute. Sixty long seconds of Kipling’s stupid poem. Mason drained his life into a giant sky laser to roast the grosser version of the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man. But it just wouldn’t fucking die. And he was starting to consider flying down there, transforming himself into a worm, and digging his way through it, or something.
Shawk dropped down in front of him with a whoosh of air, huge wingspan filling his vision as the eagle stared.
Your mate called me, ranger. She said I should repeat her words exactly: ‘accept the fucking buff! I don’t know what that means. Our young females are also quite annoying. But she seemed very animated and…
Mason squinted at his profile, and mentally reached for the accept button.
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