Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends - Interlude - Loss

Interlude – Loss

Interlude – Loss

The Elder King stood on top of a tower, a barrier surrounding and protecting him. The fight against the taken was happening outside of it. Erdania, Hitor, and Velorn Thorntail fought in the city, destroying it in the process. Three of Yirrel’s fighters were dead, Hitor had killed one, and Erdania and Velorn had managed to kill the other two. The ones that remained were the Mountain Piercer, Vergal Highmight, minotaur who was surprisingly evasive, and Minea Leoas, the River Witch.

The fight had stalled, Erdania could tell. Yirrel’s defensive buffs were still active across her entire force, but it was worse here. Erdania was familiar with her power, it scaled off the person, the more powerful the target was, the more they benefited. Both the Mountain Piercer and the River Witch had been High Rankers. It made them hard to kill. Hitor battled in the Eastern side of the city, black and red molten Qi faced against streets filled with enough water to fill a lake. Even Erdania in her Evolved Form still had to wade through ankle deep flooded streets. Yirrel stood across from her, her shield and mace raised high.

The Elder King was the problem, he didn’t fight, he wasn’t a fighter. He was a King, and he kept doing things to obstruct her Erdania and Velorn’s fight. Erdania whirled her staff deflecting another arrow that looked more fit for a balista. Mountain Piercer could increase the size of his shots, which was annoying for her. Usually such small projectiles weren’t an issue for her.

She glared in the direction the shot came from, but saw nothing, the man had gotten away again. Yirrel charged, and the oppressive air that wanted to force Erdania to her knees came again—an attack from the Elder King.

She gritted her teeth as Yirrel landed on a nearby building, then used her Avatar power. A spectral copy of Yirrel’s armored form appeared above her, only the torso and above, but that alone was equal to Erdania’s size. The avatar swung and Erdania blocked with her staff, then again for the following attack. They exchanged blows, their strikes shaking the air and the ground. Windows shattered, on what few buildings remained whole. Erdania tried to think of a way to tilt the battle and break this stalemate.

Velorn floated nearby on a golden leaf taken from his holy tree, his hands pointed in Yirrel’s direction. Roots exploded out of the ground beneath Erdania, then wove into an avatar of his own that attacked Yirrel, pushing her back. The former Warden Commander hit her shield with her mace and a blast of force explode out of it, demolishing the building beneath her and pushing Velorn’s avatar back. Erdania moved to take advantage, but another arrow slammed into her side with enough force to send her stumbling into a nearby building that collapsed under her. She grimaced and looked at her side, saw a bruise and a trickle of blood. Her body was dense, even more so with {Goddess of Worldstone} cycling through her body. To even injure her, that attack would’ve blown through nearly anything else.

She grimaced and turned to stand, when something flashed above her. And arrow exploded and a shower of them appeared, then each increased in size so that they were as pillars. As they started to fall and Erdania moved to get out of the way, the pressure hit her again, the Elder King. Her knees buckled and she dropped back to the ground, she tried to reach for her skill and evade but found her willpower suppressed as well. The arrows came from above, she moved Qi and used {Inverted Gravity Sphere} around her along with her Gravity Orb. The arrows hit the sphere of inverted gravity and slowed, but their momentum was too high to stop. Her orb pulsed and their direction shifted slightly, it wasn’t enough.

A couple hit her back, drove her in the ground as they hit with the power enough to destroy mountains. Most hit and made her groan in pain that shook her bones, but one did more. She gritted her teeth as she felt one the arrows punch through her shoulder blade.

Once the air rain was done, she stood her orb pulsing around her as she increased the Qi she supplied it to curve the follow up attacks. She saw the Mountain Piercer in the distance, and she roared as she swung her staff and threw it in his direction, rotating from end to end aided with her {Wrathful Assault}. She reached back and pulled the arrow out of her flesh. They were stalling too much, trading power for power, Erdania was sick of it.

Her staff hit the general area where her attacker hid and crashed through buildings, collapsing an entire block. Yirrel was occupied with Velorn for the moment, the two avatars beating each other to death. A dragon made out of molten Qi burned a lake of water in the distance. Erdania turned on the Elder King and his guards, hiding behind the shield that protected him.

She roared in his direction and charged, trampling through buildings. She saw the King’s eyes widen, and everything around her turned against her. The air left her lungs, the world pressed down on her, the light bent around her making her blind, the suppression on her willpower increased.

She didn’t need to see or hear, she had enough spatial awareness to know where he was. She jumped and channeled {Gravity Limit Release} and {Goddess of Unwavering Gravity}. As she fell on the Elder King and his shield she triggered her ideal.

—Reflective Harmonization—

The gravity around them changed, it came under her rule. It increased, tenfold, a hundred, more, higher and higher as she hit the shield with all her weight and the speed of being accelerated by gravity far above what was normal. The shield cracked beneath her, as did everything else. The power that blinded her and took her hearing vanished and she saw the Elder King’s guards get flattened in an instant of bloody gore. Their armors crushed them as they turned into flattened disks, sending streaks of red bursting in all directions. The ground was pushed down, the building they were standing on turned to rubble and then cratered, then deepened more widening until the entire center of the city was nothing but a smooth crater.

She floated in the center of it, and across from her was the Elder King, blood gushing from his nose and spilling from his eyes and ears, but refusing her power. She changed the direction of Gravity for a moment, for herself, and pushed her body in his direction—or more like shot it at him. He raised his hand, and she didn’t know what kind of powers he held in reserve. She wasn’t going to let him use it.

She pulsed her [Inflict Agony] and saw him wince for just a moment. A single moment where she reached within two arm-lengths of him. With both hands she touched her chest, the tattoos carved into her body, then she triggered the main formations.

Before the Elder King could respond, her tattoos flashed and then her body collapsed in on itself. The pain was… immeasurable. She died, her body did at least. All went fuzzy, and then… clarity blossomed in her mind, but she felt nothing but the pull of gravity.

Vryull landed on the flying fortress swarmed with monsters. He didn’t even know to whom it belonged, it was of no importance. The monsters attacked him immediately and he gestured with his staff. A sphere of the Void appeared above the group of monsters, no larger than a fist, a moment later it expanded and consumed them all along with a piece of the floor. Vryull used his Influence Negation to carefully make himself float, then he moved forward.

He saw dead Sect warriors everywhere, their bodies butchered and torn to pieces in ghastly displays of carnage. More monsters around him noticed his arrival, and screeched as they attacked. Void answered his call, he fired lances of it from his staff, spearing through them. He made to enter the fortress, head deeper and aid anyone else who still lived when he felt the fortress shudder.

He hesitated, and then flew up in haste. As he rose higher above it, he saw it shake, and then start to fall, the defensive formations winked out and the fortress fell. It crashed into an airship, destroying it on its way down where it smashed into the battle below. Vryull winced as he saw defensive powers activate below, only to then be buried beneath the fortress the size of a hill. He hoped that whoever was down there had managed to survive.

He looked around, saw burning fortresses and airships. The enemy reinforcements hit them hard, and they were losing the battle in the air. The sky above him was crimson and gold, lightning and fire battling for supremacy, but whatever was happening there was so far above that he couldn’t tell what was happening.

He turned his attention back to the monsters around him, and continued the fight, holding and trying to prevent the monsters from overwhelming them.

Then, something happened under him. A giant surge of Essence that he felt from so far away. He looked down and saw a black hole, a Void, and a whirlwind consuming everything. In a span of a second it pulsed and grew, from his perspective it went from the size of a coin to a fist, then the size of a pond. It pulled everything around it into its gaping maw. With every moment, it grew and grew, consuming everything in its path.

Yirrel stumbled as everything around them suddenly wrenched in the same direction. She saw Velorn’s eyes widen, then his leaf turned and took him away from the battle. She frowned as his avatar collapsed then she glanced behind and saw the reason. A black hole, that rapidly grew consuming all in its path. Then, she knew that the Elder King was dead. She felt his powers on her cut off and then the pull on her intensified. The ground and the air around the hole were pulled into it, spiraling in a wide maelstrom of debris until they reached the hole and filled it.

Then the black hole pulsed and started growing. Yirrel felt the pull on her and stumbled in its direction, debris around her and the body of Velorn’s Avatar dragged across the ground, pulled toward the giant hole. It pulsed again and engulfed a row of buildings around it, and there Yirrel saw Vergal Highmight being pulled in as well. He turned his bow on the hole and fired his arrows at an insane rate, but nothing physical could harm that thing. His attacks were broken down and joined into the carnage that spiraled around the black hole. His body hit the outer edge and she watched him break down into a splatter of red that joined the stream.

It pulsed again, and the light caught in the spiral too, creating a strange and beautiful effect that painted the spiral white.

Yirrel turned and jumped, running away. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, she had to—

A massive explosion rocked the Eastern Side of the building. She saw a massive dragon, Hitor, standing in the middle of ruin, steam rising all around him—Minea was dead. Yirrel dashed through the streets until she reached another of their hidden teleports, the ground was shaking and buildings cracking and rising in the air, flying in the direction of the black hole. She stood on the teleporter and activated it.

A moment later she was back in her Citadel, trying to think of a way to turn this around.