Michael Adams
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Cheep!? 158
🕑 Added 2023-04-18 05:06:52 +0000 UTC(Sorry for the delay! I'd thought I'd done the post this morning, but was mistaken. Here it is now!)
Niko raced through the air, one of several aerial combatants fighting over the Dawr lines, chased incessantly by arrows, spells, and projected blade attacks that whistled on their way to him. Most of the time, he could avoid them, but there were several occasions – as denoted by the handful of arrows sticking out of his flank – that forced him to take an attack. Ironically, it wasn’t the spells or the sword-strikes-turned-projectiles that were the biggest problems for him, no, his biggest problems were good, not-exactly-old-fashioned arrows. Some of the champions below had augmented their ranged assault, predominantly with the bow, which had given their projectiles a homing quality.
He wasn’t the only aerial combatant being harried either, but they were all of them planning on doing something about it.
“On me!” A broad winged bird screeched aloud in the air, and Niko answered with a similar screech. He banked hard, dodging several fireballs as they flew up towards where he would have been, drawing a groan from Skye on his back.
“You alright back there?” Niko asked aloud, “If you’re going to be sick, let me know so I can bank towards them again.”
Skye barked a laugh but didn’t respond with words. Her bow retorted with a sharp twang with several shots in rapid succession, each one streaking towards a different caster or archer that harassed them. Most wouldn’t reach their targets, but Skye had plentiful arrows in Niko’s bags.
Niko followed up behind a particularly large kind of owl, horned feathers stretching out from its head like a mess of a crown. It was peak tier four, and thus far seemed to be serving as the aerial combat commander of their region. At most, they had two dozen fliers capable of harassing the enemy forces, and thus far they hadn’t been able to do much more than poke into their sides. Skye was, unironically, able to deal the most damage out of most of them, considering she didn’t have to think about dodging at all. Niko, on the other hand, only thought about dodging, and nursed fewer injuries than many of the others who had to try to do both simultaneously.
In seconds, many other winged beasts fell into formation beside them. “Defenses up!”
Niko pushed forth his Particle Wing pattern, turning the wind below them into a churning mess. It made for somewhat less steady flying, but it would interfere with projectiles even more. With other patterns coming alive, though, Niko found the amount of the disturbance he felt from his pattern nearly dim to nothing. The wind curled around them, and Niko found himself shocked to realize that the wind he was creating beneath them was being harvested by someone in the formation.
He dumped much more essence into the wind, and heard one of the others cackle in the air. Niko turned to glance at them, some kind of bat-like creature – only slightly longer and with four sets of wings and a broad snout – who returned his gaze with glee.
“Are you whipping up that wind?” She asked. Niko nodded, and she added on, “If it doesn’t hurt your reserves, keep dumping, I can use it all!”
“You’re sure?” Niko asked, to which the bat only cackled more. He and Skye shared a shrug, but Niko didn’t plan on pulling any punches.
Concentrating before he really poured on the power, Niko imagined the reaction of the atmosphere where high and low pressure zones mixed. Then, he tuned that to the extremes, pushing down and outwards with his essence and will. To be honest, he’d never fully brought out the extremes of his pattern, because he wasn’t certain that he could deal with the aftermath.
Whether due to the pressure shift or the abundance of water vapor in the air, cloud masses and fog began to form almost instantly. It ripped and tore in cyclones, speeding up and swirling with a shrill wind that pulled inwards from every direction. For a second, there was only one smaller cyclone, but in moments more and more propagated, deepening and expanding as Niko poured his considerable essence reserves into the working. Even among tier fours, Niko imagined that his pool of energy was just as large, if not larger. Quality aside, Niko had plenty to throw at this thing.
And so he did.
Even as their barriers were buffeted by wind, they poured into the very same workings. Niko did note with some concern that the bat had gone from cackling to a maddened, almost frenetic laugh. True to her word, she continued to pull from the storm that brewed, sucking power from it and feeding their barriers. Niko figured less than a third of all the attacks the Dawr sent up at them would even reach them.
Or at least, that should have been the case. Niko looked down through the storm, realizing the entire Dawr force was now rallying, the frontlines abandoned to their own plight as they responded to the very flashy assault coming down on them from above.
“Whatever you two are doing, keep doing it!” The owl at the head of the formation called out, “Everyone else, add into the mix, we’re going to drop this right on their heads!”
With that, the rest of the formation started to contribute whatever they could. What condensation there was suddenly plumed as a pair of other beasts began to directly channel fog and mist into the storm, further obscuring their forms. The owl crackled with electricity, discharges of it pumping into the storm and lancing through the mist with an ozone scent marking its passing. Tens of others contributed wind directly, while a few of the others added their choice of elements. Ice was favored among the fliers, apparently, because there were now brick-sized chunks of ice swirling in the storm.
‘Empowered ice,’ Niko made an addendum, seeing that the ice glowed to his essence vision, ‘And they’re just adding more. This is gonna be one peck of a stormfront.’ He grinned, peering through the heavily essence-laden storm down at the Dawr forces.
Even through the storm, though, he could see the glow of the tier five Dawr Warlord as he finally stirred. Niko grimaced, “The warlord might be moving, be ready!”
The owl turned its head to regard him with surprise, before nodding, clearly taking Niko at his word. While the formation was more than willing to take the risk of attacking the enemy, they weren’t going to be dumb about it. Still, with how strong their barriers were, they would likely be safe enough.
Niko made sure to keep that thought far from the front of his consciousness, completely unwilling to tempt fate and raise any flags.
Unfortunately, when he felt and saw the blood energy race outwards from the warlord, Niko knew that the universe had decided to answer. “Incoming!”
They all braced, pouring essence directly into the barriers guarding the formation. It wasn’t the most efficient, given that none of them had a pattern quite suitable for it, but brute forcing it would have to work. Niko saw several weapons float around the warlord, each glowing in his vision, and watched as he swung them and a pair of short swords in his hands upwards. Crescent sweeps of red energy flew through the air as if shot from a cannon, cutting through the storm's interference and hitting several barriers. One of them struck Niko’s head on, and he involuntarily squawked at the sensation of the barrier shaking violently around him.
But it held.
“Peck me!” Niko cawed, looking around at the others, “Everyone good?”
“Good!” The bat called back, “Hits like a big-daddy Thimurge tho—Oh!”
Another wave of attacks hit the barriers, this one with the warlord firing alongside the rest of the Dawr below. The attacks were staggered, but nevertheless, Niko felt the storm beneath them quake as more power was pulled from it in order to fuel their defenses.
“They’ll attack all at once on the next volley!” The owl called out, “Get ready, we’re almost in position! Attack with everything you’ve got on my strike!”
Niko braced himself, still channeling essence into his Particle Wing pattern. He drew in a deep breath, fueling his Clarion Call pattern with power. They crossed tens of meters rapidly, and before the Dawr could attack again, Niko let loose with his Clarion Call.
The rushing wave of buffing essence interlaced with his allies' own efforts. As with a catalyst, Niko felt the storm beneath them grow and swell, suddenly no longer fully beholden to their formation for power. It was a sea-born stormfront far from home, full of baleful malevolence for anything beneath it. All the flock of beasts had to do was direct it.
“Now!” The owl shouted, discharging tens of writhing coils of lightning down into the clouds, which seemed to multiply with the electricity already within. Niko pushed with his Particle Wing, fanning the storm downwards and forward into the Dawr, just as those with wind manipulation continued to push.
The bat that had to that point been drawing power from the storm to feed the barriers now shunted some of that energy the other way, creating a pressure zone that further forced the winds away from their position.
The Dawr let loose another volley, but even the warlord's attacks didn’t breach the furious squall that bore down upon them. Even as it did so, the aerial combatants didn’t hesitate to pour more oil on the fire, so-to-speak, happily expediting the storm's fury.
Below, the Dawr were still far from helpless, though. The Shaman’s of the tribe worked together, a guttural chanting and compounded working of essence coalescing into a barrier that helped to deflect and pick apart the front of the storm, hoping to divert it. Niko and the others worked to the opposite end, applying the momentum of their work to overcome the difference in numbers between the two sides.
As lightning, empowered hail, and slicing winds cut into the army, Niko felt a rising hope that this attack might well cripple the force outright.
Skye let loose more arrows, focusing long enough to empower each one to get through their own side of the storm. Each arrow was intended for a shaman, but the champions continued to block for them even in the face of a natural disaster looming over them. Niko let out belting blasts of Carrion Call, focusing the shots to disorient and try to damage the shamans during their casting. Unfortunately, he was too far away to deal any worthwhile damage, or hit enough of them to interrupt the casting itself.
The storm ground to a halt against the army, but even while they fended that off, the ground forces on Riizen’s side took the opportunity to strike out at them. Whereas the fliers simply didn’t have the numbers, that was clearly not the case for the grounded warriors. The front of the Dawr army took the brunt of the charge with limited support from the rest of the goblinoids.
Unable to stop guarding against the storm without letting it drop on their heads, the Dawr were forced to try to grind the storm to nothing rather than simply deflect it. The warlord roared with what Niko thought of as impotent fury in that moment.
“Serves you right!” Niko cawed at the Dawr below mockingly, “Should’ve been more careful who you chose to peck at!”
The others all relished in seeing the Dawr locked in a standstill, though everyone could tell that the storm wasn’t going to be able to hold together for much longer. The warlord alone was slicing through large swathes of it, with some strikes cutting through now and reaching them in the air. They wouldn’t be able to hold their position for much longer, but Niko kept sending out blasts of his Carrion Call whenever he could.
Then the call for retreat came, and Niko banked off hard and low, using his Particle Wing to accelerate himself and Skye. The entire formation collapsed as fliers rapidly peeled away, making it difficult to hit them as a whole. They’d be relying on the storm to give them the last cover they needed to perform a full retreat to regroup.
Niko himself breathed in deeply, stealing away as much of the available blood energy as he could into his soul-brand on the way out. He had to wrestle with the shamans, but given that they were preoccupied, he was able to pilfer a significant haul from the mess that had become the front ranks of their army. With a triumphant shrill call, the Az-Phorus pulled away even faster, completely outflying the few projectiles of those that had realized that he’d once more stolen away a significant portion of their blood energy.
As he flew upwards, though, he did note that while there were many Dawr casualties, the bulk of the force had held strong. None of the siege towers had escaped damage, but even the one that appeared the most affected sported little more than charr and light structural damage. Niko wondered if they were just that durable, or if the shamans had devoted more of their attention to keeping them shielded.
Even as he regrouped with the rest of the aerial forces, the march forwards towards Riizen renewed. The Dawr pushed the towers to the front, forming something of a wall that they marched behind. Given that Niko could swoop in and steal away their power, he figured they would rather take damages to the towers.
Ballistae began to fire from the holes in the wall, hitting the towers near the base, but many failed to do more than stick into the wood itself. Niko frowned at that, worried that they weren’t going to be able to deal any real damage to them.
He continued to watch as he joined back up with the rest of the flock, “Doesn’t look like those did much damage.”
“It really doesn’t.” Skye agreed, eyeing the towers, “I’m not sure what we can do about them though.”
It wasn’t as if they had a particularly good way to damage them from afar. Perhaps if they were willing to attack the siege towers directly they could do something, but Niko was certain they were packed full of Dawr. If they were just goblins, it wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but in large numbers the hobgoblins could still be a major threat. He doubted that there weren’t at least some champions spread out within them, either.
Another volley of ballistae fired, and Niko hoped that they would do better this time.
All of the bolts struck one tower specifically, a coordinated strike that punched into the base of the structure. Though it was a huge thing, the wood and metal plating of the construct was still punched through. Niko was alarmed by that, wondering what had changed, when he realized that the first volley of bolts were unenchanted and just metal. These ones were different.
That was only doubly proven when they exploded into flames within the tower itself, the distant scream of Dawr and roaring fire audible. Black smoke and licking flames shot out in gouts from the cracks and holes the bolts had formed. The tower didn’t so much as slow, but Niko hoped it couldn’t take too many hits like that.
“Everyone not expected back on the wall continue harassing efforts. Those of you expected to help in the ground defense, go back now.” The owl commanded, and Niko knew that he was in the latter category.
“Good luck!” Niko trilled out as he slowly banked back towards Riizen.
“You as well!” The bird crackled with electricity as they turned their own attention back to the Dawr. At the rate they moved, Niko figured they’d be able to hit the wall within three minutes if it wasn’t for their ground defenses. With them, he bet at least an hour.
‘Hopefully enough time to regenerate the essence I’ve spent…’ A nearly half-spent Niko thought, with the hopes of stuffing his face with something essence rich when they returned.
