“Radioman’s log, hour 15…” Minato said softly into his recording device. His room was aglow with comforting twilight lighting, a setting of the wondrous magical house he was staying in, plucked straight from his childhood day dreams. Pure darkness, with the monster and jungle-forest outside, would have unnerved him more than relaxed him. The luxury of a literal cloud bed was not something Minato every thought he’d experience on a mission, or in his entire life! This was beyond the bounds of any magic he thought possible; the thought of what lay beyond, that the boundaries of what he thought was possible could be surpassed, made him want to duck his nose books again, fiction and non-fiction, to find the thread of the path forward to make dreams into reality.
“We’ve been offered sanctuary within an otherworld artifact, which Lieutenant Diya accepted. The jungle-forest is perilous, and rest would not be had without the security of this abode…” he glanced outside, where monsters prowled, yet the house sat idly, unmolested and tranquil. “A full 6 hours of sleep! I could hardly believe it. To think the other world has such advancements…Our outlook on their civilization as ‘primitive’ was hasty, and it needs to be revised. Like the arrogance Western civilization once held over the East, have we internalized our own unwarranted superiority towards magical civilizations. Ambrose had been correct, that magical and science have their own strengths, and a hybrid of the two will have the greatest strength, like the alloying of metals…
“I find myself curious on how magic integrated into society would have changed manufacturing and technology, but there is only so much Ambrose can explain…we could not so much explain the technology of a smartphone if our positions were reversed.”
Well, Minato could, but his level of knowledge was abnormal, and Ambrose had only spent a year and a half in the other world.
A full 6 hours… echoed in his head. If only Minato could calm himself enough to sleep. He continued to talk, verbalizing his restless excitement to expel it from his mind.
“Despite the difficulties of the first few hours, the rest of the mission has been progressing smoothly, and we are more than halfway through the floating island chain. Each island has had a single focal monster, as predicted, although—” he cringed “—the first one had burnt to a crisp. Destruction unverified.”
The death of each focal monster should guarantee the destruction of all dependent monsters upon zone collapse; regardless, it was Agency policy to slay all other monsters as well. The strength of the focal monster (or stabilizing etheric entity, as the higher ups called it) prevented the destruction of dependent monsters upon volatile zone collapse, allowing the ‘spill’. Still, since they could not accept the escape of even one monster (and that looted monsters were valuable resources), Agency standard operation was to kill all monsters in a zone, if possible.
“It is unfortunate that this volatile zone could support such a small squad, or else someone like Ambrose would have been sent to slay the focal monsters—” Mini bosses, his mind supplied –alone…Although in area of London, we may not have an EQ 2 agent capable of such a feat against EQ 3 etheric entities.
“At the rate of our progression, we will complete the mission and clear the zone within the requisite 44 hours. We have seen great benefits to Ambrose’s training…such complex terrain with strict entry limits would have greatly delayed any other squad. I wonder what Ambrose would think of our strategies in a larger volatile zone? Although inefficient in complex and limited situations, I believe the Agency’s approach to large scale combat has value. A hybrid, in all things…”
*****
“Radioman’s log, hour 25…” Minato rested within the cloud house, blended into the surrounding jungle-forest as a vertical house build around the trunk of a tree. A spiral staircase curled around the trunk, nature’s centerpiece. Wooden bridge-paths followed tree branches, arching off into private rooms. A dappled canopy of barrier magic and leaves softened the late-morning light, casting a dreamy and druidic shade upon the magic abode. The chair he curled upon seemed wrought from wood and bark, artful twigs and leaves as embellishments, yet its comfort was unmatched.
It his hands was an artisanal sandwich—something like soppressata with something like giardiniera—Minato wasn’t entirely clear whether this sandwich was from this world or the other. It was really tasty though, perfectly toasted, and Minato would put any mystery meat in his mouth if it meant not eating rations. Taste above all else.
“It is lunch break, and I have learned that the concept of a sandwich transcends dimensional boundaries. Of all the things to be surprised about,” he said, lifting his sandwich to appreciate its familiar form, “it should not be this. Filling between two slices of bread is not a revolutionary concept, yet I find myself in awe of our commonplace similarities.
“We have been progressing smoothly, although our difficulties have been increasing. As we approach the higher islands, our trees—and our cover—thins. Soon, we will be without. Squad leader has taken the opportunity to further our training, with Ambrose acting as our instructor, once again.
“We have learned that the other world does not possess such accurate methods as monster detection—EQ estimations are largely guesswork, based on aura senses and magic senses alone. A distinct advantage of Earth…although there was much discussion on the nature of challenge. The educational philosophy of the other world is very…Spartan… Without the use of cores, progress through use—and combat—is the only way to progress. I have not considered the safety that cores afforded recruits…to boost above the majority of monsters of an EQ, training skill to match EQ power, although Ambrose would disagree that our skill and power match.”
He gazed outside the window, munching on another bite of his sandwich and clearing his throat with a wash of water. Extremely unprofessional for an actual log, but this was for himself.
“All roads lead to the same path. And I am a soldier, fighting as they are.” He cracked a smile no one would see. “I’m starting to sound like Nara’s—Ambrose’s—mentors. There must be some sort of middle ground for training. But that is the point of information exchange, long understood by civilization, back from the winding tales from the Silk Road and the informational cauldron of the Mediterranean.
“Ambrose has brought up other concerns…the other world is rife with the interference of their own otherworldly forces, in the literal sense,” he quipped. “This world has no such alien interference—haha—or does it? Are they lurking in the background, controlling our governments? She made it all sound quite conspiratorial and asked the Lieutenant if there are such rumors here. The Lieutenant denied it of course but she…but she looked thoughtful.” An involuntary shudder chilled his body.
“Would it be too na?ve to hope?”
*****
The last island was predictably barren of all life, the land was a sandbox of hard corners and edges, rocks raised and lowered in jagged slopes. Loose rocks had long been flung off the island, or collected divots, waterless pools, and crags. Boulders too heavy to move were stoic against the wind, not yet shaped in an astral space that had not existed long enough for the smoothing hand of erosion (although such logic did not necessarily exist for an astral space).
More perilous was the wind, hurricane strong, which screamed though narrow gaps and roared unyielding. Yasmin flexed her fingers, wind shaping powers creating their own hurricane’s eye. It was a small mercy that the land had long lost any projectiles to fling at them, although Nara was rather confident that they’d been trained to at least react to that specifically.
The squad remained in the eye, protectively enclosing Yasmin. Her bubble of protection was limited in area, for now, in order to conserve mana; She’d expand it later, allowing the squad to better capitalize on the range of their weapons. While Nara didn’t require area to operate, her evasiveness and combat options benefited from it.
With tearing winds, unrelenting to both friend and foe, the monster variety had shifted. Only the most powerful fliers still braved the sky, or those with a magical effect to ignore wind, abilities parallel to Yasmin. Now, most monsters slunk in the shadows of spire and stone or burrowed beneath the rocky ground.
The screech of wyverns carried on the wind. Wind elementals launched whistling blades of wind, which crashed into Warthog’s and Watson’s conjured riot shields. Nara dived into the winds, calculating their pull best she could, but their patterns were alien and unreadable.
“Wind and sea part, heaven and earth make way!” Yasmin’s chant rang through party chat, and Nara the winds gentled to something brisk, coyly brushing past her face. Nara was grateful her robes were partially incorporeal, or her legs would tangle in them.
Her senses pinged, a warning of danger. 5 silver rank entities…
Minato’s voice rang out just a beat ahead, urgent, “4 EQ 3s, incoming! EQ 2 hostiles also inbound, 5 minutes out!”
The tension racketed up, squad members all tensed, quick pats verifying weapon stockpiles and life-saving injections.
“Nara, how many can you occupy? One?” Came Diya’s voice from voice chat.
She flexed her hand around her sword. “If it’s just to ‘occupy’, I may be able to manage 2.”
“Prioritize one, two if possible.” Diya confirmed her request. She shouted them to attention. “Squad, at the ready!”
Two of the EQ 3s were wyverns, and the ones Nara decided were the greatest risk to the squad. From the other 7 islands, their breath attacks were usually acid or fire, both of which suffered somewhat in this environment, although any point blast attack would melt their body armor to their skin, with both varieties. Their greater danger was their ability to grasp a teammate and fly off with them, separating them from the group into the unforgiving winds.
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In the limited fighting area maintained by Yasmin, Earth’s tactics fared well, the members in tight formations covering each other’s backs, fronts, heads, and asses.
With Yasmin’s wind blessing, Nara blinked out her protective wind wall and used Blood Rebound to force her initial attack through a thick hide of leathery scales. Leaning into the attack, she leveraged her body weight and twisted, earning an ear-popping screech that confirmed the first wyvern’s enmity. She jumped off, reducing her gravity and letting the wind catch her like a sail, flinging away from the wyvern. It dove towards her, aerodynamic scales of burnished bronze glinting in the harsh daylight like an ancient sword cleaving the sky. The wyvern possessed a better aerodynamic sense than she did, and chased easily, reading the maze-like winds like the path was drawn out in child-friendly sharpie.
She twisted: it followed. A sharp beak-like mouth snapped open, rows of gleaming steel teeth ready to snap shut just as quickly on vulnerable flesh. She could smell its hot breath for a fraction of a second before the winds tore that sensation away.
That’d be her limit of using the winds to her own benefit. As she suspected, she couldn’t out-maneuver a king of the sky this way. She solidified her Cosmic Path and reversed direction, ducking past the wyvern gnashing teeth with a speed even it couldn’t react to, thanks to their absurdly close quarters, and its inherent limitations in neck flexibility.
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Ability: [Cosmic Path]
Essence: Mystic
Conjuration (dimension, movement)
Cost: Moderate mana / High mana
Cooldown: None / 10 minutes
Effect (Iron): Conjures a path of stars beneath the caster’s feet. Prevents abilities from manifesting directly below the caster. Enhances [Speed]. Can reduce the weight of the caster for low mana-per-second cost, allowing for reduced fall speed and water walking. Can further enhance the caster’s [Speed] for additional low mana-per-second cost. The slow-fall effect can be extended to others in proximity.
Effect (Bronze): Cosmic Path allows gliding for low mana-per-second cost. Weight reduction no longer costs mana unless affecting additional people. Can make Cosmic Path briefly tangible for a low mana cost. This effect has a 20 second cooldown.
Effect (Bronze): Conjure a dimensional gate between two locations on a regional scale. The distant gate must appear at a location you previously visited. This effect is a conjuration with a very high mana cost and a 10-minute cooldown. Other effects can still be used while this ability is on cooldown.
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Another slash sliced down its belly, splitting but a thin red line down. Damn silver rank toughness.
The wyvern was fast, quick, but not unpredictable, fighting with a mostly animal-based intelligence, completely unlike the living Armor. She could handle 2, she judged, and went to pull the second. The continued fighting of the past hour clearing the island had built up her stacks of boons, maintained by Overture.
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Ability: [Overture]
Essence: Harmonic
Spell (boon, magic)
Incantation: “Song rises from within.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Applies or refreshes the duration of [Crescendo]. This ability can only be cast on self.
- [Crescendo] (boon, magic): Periodically applies an additional instance of each stacking boon on self. This effect cannot be dispelled while any other instance of a boon is in effect.
Effect (Bronze): Applies or refreshes the duration of [Sforzando].
- [Sforzando] (boon, magic): Increases the maximum instance limit of boons and maximum simultaneous boon enhancement. This effect cannot be dispelled while any other instance of a boon is in effect.
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She teleported forwards, Blood Rebound once again cleaving in, cutting a slice of the neck of Wyvern 2. It wheeled, abruptly changing its target from Minato to Nara.
“Breath type?” she asked urgently through the Party Guide.
“Unused, unknown,” Minato replied, just as harried. The EQ 2s had reached them: a rather terrifying horde of moles that could bite through solid stone. Other than that, were strange, rope-like monsters that swung across from rock to rock, using a weighted tip and bladed body to attempt to take the heads of anyone that didn’t duck quick enough or get a shield up in time, or crush ribcages with the incredible momentum of a whip crack aided with wind. The moles were an annoying distraction against the sheer terror the whip monsters posed.
She shot through a gap between rock formations, alternating between evasions and attacks with Wyvern 1 nipping at her heels. Her aura senses tracked Wyvern 2, which looped around to the other side to try to trap her. Animalistic, but capable of pack tactics. Smart bastards.
Its chest expanded, powerful wings pausing it in air for just a moment.
Breath!
She teleported downwards, vanishing from its line of sight. She didn’t catch what breath it was—nothing seemed to have happened. Had it faked out a breathe attack? She may have to revise her evaluation of their intelligence.
Regardless, Wyvern 1 chased her down, sweeping below Wyvern 2 as she did. Fortunately, the wyverns couldn’t fly backwards, a weakness she’d make sure to take advantage of. She was, however, caught off-guard with Wyvern 2’s next maneuver—it spun vertically, spinning like a CD—
Apparently its first breath had been a fake out, as in the next moment a rush of air shot outwards. Nara braced herself for something burning—acid or fire—and the unpleasant stench of her own corroding flesh, but instead was launched backwards, breathless despite her lack of lungs from the sheer force.
It felt like she had been smashed by a train made of wind.
Wind breath, she concluded, as she hurtled towards a rock. Luckily, within the corridor of stone, she flew back parallel, avoiding any near-instant crash that would have shattered her spine. She could only divert her direction with a node jump, shooting straight up into the hurricane winds instead of dashing herself on hard, jagged stone.
The winds should have torn her velocity from her; Yasmin’s wind blessing allowed for her to slip through the winds like a peregrine falcon or catch upon it like an albatross, and in this moment of hurtling through the sky like an uncontrolled engineless rocket launch she definitely wanted the wind to slow her down. Quickly, she came to the next most logical conclusion: the EQ 3 wyverns inflicted magical effects beyond the obvious magical effects of their breath. And, yes—glancing at her Guide, an effect [Uncontrolled Slipstream] lingered, which nullified the effects of wind resistance and other beneficial wind manipulation effects.
Figures. EQ 3—ugh, Silver Rank monsters was the rank monsters were known to consistently have additional or strange magical effects.
The wyverns zoomed forwards, swooping and snapping, and Nara did her best to fight them and her own uncontrollable velocity.
Her sword flickered against teeth and claws, jamming into more vulnerable gums and wrenching itself like a particularly nasty toothpick. She gradually regained control of her own motion, flying instead of hurtling, and shifted back into a balance of offense and defense rather than the backfoot she had been set upon.
God. She would have vomited all over herself and the landscape below her by now if she wasn’t so used to ludicrous three-dimensional movement, or perhaps she should thank her outworlder body for its lack of a brain and semicircular canals.
She had little attention to spare for the squad while fighting two silver rank flying enemies at once, but judging from the intermittent shouts through voice chat and the bright flares of magical fire, challenge was escalating into danger.
*****
A mash of muscle and blood welled from where a whip-snake had clipped Warthog in the side of his arm that he had raised to protect his neck. Jameson’s control abilities had slowed them, but their wavy parabolic paths were nasty work and keelhauling to actually avoid. He could only grit his teeth and haul his heavy machine gun through the pain, which of their weapons had enough magical and physical heft to pierce through the sodding infuriating wind.
“Fuckity fucks, fuck!” He yelled. “Beanpole pillocks, suck my bollocks!”
“Brain’s going now is it,” Watson dully commented, dry wit preserving through this disaster. “Those are bullets not bollocks.”
Jameson was breathing a tad fast. His gun fired bolas, which, great in any other damn scenario. Watson was really starting to hate guns, never thought he’d think such a thing! Some of his other abilities did their work, like chains and ropes, but setting up a chain-tripwires between rocks didn’t much block the buggering snakes. It did some mighty work against the blasted wyverns, tangling their wings long enough for Warthog to shoot them full of holes, but Jameson was on the verge of panic.
“Calm yourself, Jameson.” Diya commanded, eyes flickering to him in the chaos, the only evidence of her own frayed nerves. “This is just another battle. We’ll make it through.”
Warthog knew their good ol’ commander was intentionally making it seem like this whole situation wasn’t plowing them against the rocks and up the arse, but Jameson wasn’t calm enough to notice she was soothing him like a skittish horse about to bolt.
Another whip-snake darted out, swinging low to his ankles—intercepted by one of John’s shields, who was so focused that the normally companionable man spared no smile or nod of assurance. Warthog let out a shaky breath. He was so damn glad for him.
John’s own floating Guardian Shield shielded Minato and his delicate equipment. It was far more fantastical than their riot shields, gleaming with polished silver metal with swirling gold and blue designs around the edge. The metal sounded with clangs and bangs as it absorbed hits, a cymbal crash in the cacophonous storm.
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Ability: [Guardian Shield]
Essence: Immortal
Conjuration (shield, retributive)
Cost: Very high mana
Cooldown: 5 minutes
Effect (Iron): Conjure a floating shield that can withstand a large amount of damage. The shield will automatically float in a location around the conjurer to intercept attacks, or it can be actively controlled. The shield can be healed to restore its integrity. When the shield is destroyed, it cannot be reconjured until its cooldown ends. If the shield has not been destroyed, it can be reconjured at any time, at a moderate mana cost. The shield regenerates durability slowly while not conjured.
Effect (Bronze): When the shield is damaged, it inflicts retributive damage to the attacker equal to the damage and type of damage inflicted on it. This effect ignores the shield’s own damage mitigation. The shield can be bestowed onto an ally but cannot be actively controlled by the ally. The shield can still be actively controlled by the conjurer when bestowed.
-------
Another whip-snake, their collective bane, swung long and low like a bladed tripwire. Warthog jammed his shield down cracking the rock with his urgency and force, but the slinky fucker swung with it as a pivot. Almost all of them managed to avoid wiping out in the most dangerous game of skipping rope (Yasmin was floating on a cushion of air, Warthog would’ve put up a stink about the utter waste of mana, but even he conceded it was warranted now). With a sickening crunch and tear Jameson’s ankle shattered against the blow.
Fuck! Jameson was shaking, tipping into panic. The screeches, the howls, and whistling cracks of shattered rock weren’t going to help him regain his calm. He was completely bugging out.
Warthog glanced up—Ambrose was in the middle of her own utterly ludicrous aerial battle—Warthog wanted to retch just looking at it—handling two EQ 3, and some collateral damage EQ 2s, on her own. No help was coming from her.
There were screams around him, yells of exertion, whimpers from Jameson. Warthog wished he’d shut up, because they all felt like whimpering and crying. No. They’d sweat and bleed instead.
They were soldiers, keeping it together against the fear, despite their own rabbiting hearts ready to give it up. All Warthog could do was continue to defend and fire. Jameson was back on his feet, thanks to John, but he was diminished. Better than fucking nothing, but it was the worst thing to glimpse the sluggishness of hopelessness. That’s when it was dangerous. That’s when you died, when you stopped fighting to live.
It was the third EQ 3 wyvern that sent it all to hell and damnation.
Yasmin’s storm eye had wavered in size, for just a moment, but it was enough for a wanker of a wyvern to capitalize and dart forwards. John’s shield burst out, protecting Diya buying a crucial moment—and for a moment, Warthog even believed nothing would go wrong, that this was as already as bad as it would get—the wyvern twisted, tail lashing out and slamming into Diya. She blocked admirably, composed enough to react to even that, but the tight confines meant she was inevitably launched out of their safety bubble.
“DIYA!!!” he roared, swinging his gun around with a heaving twist and firing around the monsters that fell upon her, careful to miss her own form. He upped the fire rate for more mana, burning it all to try to preserve her. He should be economical, he could hear her lecture, ‘had you learnt nothing in this volatile zone?’
She had to be alive to lecture him.