STORMWEAVER II: Chapter 31 Sneak Peek (Patreon)

Just another reminder that next week will be a break week cause I gotta go to a wedding soooorrrrryyyy!

Enjoy!

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High, high above him Rei caught a flash of red hair in the sunlight, framed in arching blue as Aria’s form briefly appeared, then vanished again. An idea came to him, borrowed from some months back, and Rei snorted.

Then he set his legs, crouched, and leapt straight up, calling on Shido as he did.

“Type Shift: Saber Mode!”

He was driving the sword forward before it had even finished manifesting, the blade just finished to take form when it struck the stone point-first with all the boosted Strength of the Device’s alternate mode.

The impact of the strike was jarring, and Rei realized that while he’d given Aria credit for the idea when she’d pulled a very similar stunt during Team Battle training the previous semester, he’d never granted her enough respect for the execution. Newton’s third law was a bitch, because while Rei did manage to spear the sword deep into the solid rock, the resulting opposite force jerked him back so hard he nearly wrenched the weapon right out of the cliff as he held onto it for dear life. He yelped as his body was jarred, scrabbling at the handle with his left hand too until he got a decent twin grip of the thing, then pausing for just a moment to stop the haphazard swinging of his legs and torso as he hung there. Below, he heard Cook reach the bottom of cliff too, and probably would have appreciated the Saber’s open-mouthed upward gaped if he’d glanced down.

But Rei’s attention was on the top of the cliff above him, neuroline whirring in his head as he calculated quickly. Opting to have faith in his Saber’s Strength again, he set his arms, braced himself, then kicked his legs up and pulled with all his might in the same motion.

As it turned out, he’d underestimated things, because instead of making a neat—and rather cool-looking, he’d hoped—landing just at the edge of the cliff where he’d seen Aria a moment before, Rei sent himself flying almost 10 feet above the lip and right over the chaos that was the fight raging there, arms and legs flailing as he did.

“Oh shit! Type Shift: Brawler Mode! Brawler Mode!”

Shido’s lighter armor had just plated itself back around his arms, legs, and body when he crashed down into the fight, landing on top of Red Crown’s poor—and utterly unsuspecting—Pacey Clayton.

“OOPH!” the Saber exclaimed as she went down under his weight, and Rei—equally as surprised in the moment—shouted a rushed “Sorry!” as he tried to untangle himself from the girl.

Then, though, Clayton twisted on the ground under him and slashed as his face with her green-lined sword, and Rei remembered where he was.

Just managing to keep the top of his skull on by flinging himself back and off the girl, Rei rolled to his feet in the middle of a total shit-show. At a glance, there were three positives. First: Aria and Catcher were both still up. Second: Cashe had reached them already, which hopefully meant that Grant wasn’t far behind. Third: those three had managed to position themselves so their backs were to the jutting edge of the cliff which only provided their assailants about a 90-degree angle of assault.

On the other hand…

Red, green, yellow, Rei ticked of for himself as he ducked a high slash from Hannah Tether’s spear, backpedalling out of the heart of the fight even while parrying away the thrusting shortsword from a Kenneth Phalanx he was pretty sure was called Subhaan Hirst. That’s all of them.

Firesong was putting up a fight, but at least two members of Daggerfall, Red Crown, and Valormade each were all already there with them, and making no attempt to fight each other until the monster was slain.

“Shit,” Rei could only mutter and he finally retreated enough to fall in line between Cashe and Catcher, with Aria on the Saber’s other side.

“YUP!” Catcher shouted in agreement, eyes wide as he jerked his head to one side to avoid a thrust for Kay’s spear, this time. “WE’RE SCREWED!”

“Quick question, though,” Cashe asked from the other side, face screwed up in concentration. “Am I crazy, or did Ward just fly into the fight?”

“Did he fly?” Aria grunted form her other side as she turned away a Kenneth Mauler’s axe with her shield and drove Hippolyta forward to gauge the boy in the hip. “Looked more like fell to me.”

“FLOPPED!” Catcher agreed, still yelling as he fought.

“Flailed,” Cashe confirmed, finally.

“Can we—urk!—focus, guys?!” Rei demanded, sucking his gut in to keep from being eviscerated as Kay’s spear cleverly flicked away from a feint at Catcher towards his stomach. “Also, you’re all assholes.”