Infinite Realm: Monsters & Legends - Interlude - Pressure

Interlude – Pressure

Interlude – Pressure

The mass of tendrils collided with her and wrapped around her four wings, then started to squeeze. The General was strong, she felt the bones in one of her wings crack and she screamed. She got taken off guard, and she couldn’t use her Sky Techniques to tear it away without taking her wings with it, its grip was too strong. She had hit it with a Bond Qi technique before and had done little damage, it was resistant. She dismissed her Evolved Form, her body shrinking back down. The General moved immediately, trying to catch her again and squeeze her small body to death.

With |Mine Are The Winds, And The Sky| she ordered the wind to carry her out of its grasp. The current caught her wings, pushing her away as the mass of tendrils reached out for her, not even the wind would be fast enough, she could tell. She reached out with her hand and pulled out her awakened weapon.

Cloud Walker manifested as if born out of clouds. She gripped the haft tightly and used Cloud Step. Her body turned into a substance resembling that of clouds and she surged to the side as the tendrils tried to grab hold and simply passed through her. She reformed to the side, Qi already moving through her conduits.

With a beat of her wing she surged forward, then stabbed the spear into the General’s side. She channeled the technique through the weapon, pushing her Sky Qi through it and into the General’s body. Then, she triggered {Empty Detonation}. The Sky expanded inside of it, and a chunk of its body exploded, the blast carried her back and she let it. Still, the General was massive, and while its tendrils lashed out widely, it was not dead.

“It was a shallow stab,” Cloud Walker said, and Tali grimaced.

“I told you; I don’t fight with weapons,” Tali responded. Cloud Walker was right, if she had stabbed deeper or someplace else, she could’ve done more damage. Cloud Walker could let her channel her powers through it, as well as let her use Cloud Step, but it couldn’t make her better at something.

She didn’t have a lot of time to contemplate, she flew around the General, charging techniques and then unleashing them around it. She threw out two {Tempestuous Sky} techniques around it, one with Sky Qi and the other with Bond Qi. The area around the General filled with a tempest of Qi. The Sky trembled as the wind and clouds assaulted it, while her Bond Qi attempted to tear it apart. It was resisting, but she could see that it was weakening. She flew in her smaller form, to make herself harder of a target. The General flew after her, and she kept attacking it, chipping at it slowly.

She didn’t even remember how many Generals she had fought, but she felt the tiredness rising. Her Qi supplies would soon reach dangerous levels, and her willpower was on its last dregs. Then, finally, she felt her Bond Qi find purchase, and lines started opening up in the monster’s body, black ichor-like blood seeping from it in large deluge.

She flew above it and changed back into her Evolved Form, then she dove. She screeched as she slammed into it, through a wound and into its body. Then she unleashed a massive {Empty World} with Sky Qi.

The General burst from the inside, and the sky around her cracked as everything was pushed away along with pieces of its body. The smaller monsters burst into showers of blood as they were hit by the blast, clouds and wind expanded outward, and the stronger monsters were thrown away with such force that their bones cracked.

The dark and cloudy sky around her was suddenly empty and clear. It gave her a moment to look around and see the situation around her.

A battle was taking place beneath her, airships and fortresses fighting swarms of monsters and Generals, they filled the air so much that she couldn’t even see the ground. She saw a fortress get swarmed, an airship on fire tumbling down and crashing into another. Sect fliers getting gorged on by the monsters, a warrior caught by two and then tore in half as they fought over them. Then, out of the edge of the clouds that she had pushed away, a new monster burst out. The curtain of the clouds bulged and then was pushed away as a giant General appeared. Behind it followed another army. She felt her heart sink as she saw the monsters exiting the clouds, the new swarms swooping on the forces under her.

The General entered the empty space around her. This one looked like a flying whale, a giant monster with a third eye on the center of its head. It glowed and the clouds around them turned red, then scarlet lightning started flashing in the depths of the clouds. She saw it explode in all directions, both her and the army below.

She didn’t have the time to worry about anyone else as arcs of it came at her from every direction. She entered her Ascended State again, then released {One Bonded Sky}. The lightning stopped before reaching her, glowing points of the attacks surrounded her in a perfect sphere as if they were hitting a translucent shield, her technique and her Qi kept the lightning away. It burned so bright that soon red light was all that she could see. She strained, and then, the attack abated, and the lightning dissipated. Tiredly she looked up and saw the General coming her way, its eyes glowing again and lightning flashing around her once more.

Then, before the General could unleash its attack again, a piece of a red cloud turned golden then was set on fire. A flying shape burst out of it and smashed into the General, eliciting a loud whine of pain.

Tali saw the golden fire burning the giant whale’s side, then lightning flashed along its surface. The golden shape flew away, lightning chasing it. Tal looked at Awirren, the Golden Phoenix, saw lightning hitting her Evolved Form, her beautiful golden feathers turning dark from the attack. The clouds around her flashed again, the attack was prepared again. All she had to do was wait, do nothing.

Instead, she reached inside of herself and pulled, manifesting her Domain: Sky Expanse.

She banished the clouds, and with them most of the lightning. She looked to the side and saw Awirren glance at her. In the clear sky of her domain, they both dove at the General together.

“Now is the time,” Mal said as the flashed into existence just next to him.

Vesterius glanced at him as he bashed his axe through a monster’s head. “What?”

“The plan, you fool!” Mal said through his teeth as he blinked away from a monster attack, then appeared behind it and touched its skin. Half of its body disappeared as if cleanly cut away.

“Oh,” Vesterius said. He looked back at the battle around him, but there wasn’t much to do on this front at the moment. In the distance he saw a whirling storm of fire and death pushing ahead of the Twilight Melody Sect’s battle lines. They had been pushed hard, even he had known that things weren’t looking good. And then everything changed, he hadn’t been close enough to see what happened, but he could tell that something had hit the monsters, hard. The Sect Leader that was commanding them, Nayra, she was a monster too, even Vesterius could see that.

She stood ahead of the Sect lines now, holding off an entirely new swarm, advancing even straight through them. She was lessening the work that the rest of them had to do. And the undead walked among them, the battle was won.

Vesterius loved the fighting, but he had also made a promise.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Mal placed a hand on his shoulder, and in a blink the two of them were somewhere else. Vesterius stumbled and caught on the wall, then looked around and saw that they were in a small secluded corner. He glanced up and saw the shining shield above them.

“We’re inside,” Mal whispered. “In the courtyard.”

“You know where we need to go?” Vesterius asked.

“Of course,” Mal snorted. “Stay by, I know that I can get in undetected, taking the thing out of the vault will trigger defenses. I’m gonna need your shout once they come at us.”

“How many do you think?”

Mal leaned and looked around the corner. “They have some taken on the walls, but most are occupied operating the artillery arrays. The rest are in the city or the field.”

Vesterius grimaced, then hefted his axe. “Lead the way.”

Nayra moved and the air caught fire. The ground shook and the monsters exploded from her mere touches. The Death filled the battlefield in an amount that she had never experienced before. She couldn’t quite control herself; her stats were so high that a step would take her leagues. She was ahead of the Sect army now, ahead of the undead army that was charging across the blood-soaked land. She didn’t intend to do that, but she had somehow just found herself here, in the middle of the enemy forces.

A General came at her, moving faster than even the eye could see. She sensed it through her Battle Trance and Battle Knowledge, she anticipated its arrival and attack. Goddess of Speed, and she sidestepped its attack, its blades carved into the ground where she stood just a moment before. Her follow up was a thrust with her spear. She stabbed it with such force and power that its entire body burst into black mist, its blood and flesh boiling and disintegrating in equal measure. The mist was carried away by a blast of broken air and carving of the earth beneath. A wave that crushed and destroyed monsters in the line behind her thrust for kilometers in ahead until it hit a hill on the other side of the battlefield and made it explode in a shower of earth and stone.

She turned her attention back ahead of her, looked at the great battle ahead, where Ryun and Selia were destroying their enemy. The monsters had gathered around them, but she saw a dozen Generals attack them, increasing the pressure on the two of them. She activated Valkyrie’s Swiftness, and then she charged ahead. Her form shrouded in dawnfire, her wings spread on her back. She beat them and flew with her shield in front of her, keeping close to the ground.

She went through monsters in her way, carving a blazing path through the army as she made her way to join the two fighting in the distance. Death filled her, it was time that they ended this.