My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror - Chapter 295 (Patreon)

Ether warped the air, storming around the battlefield as hundreds of mages all drew on it, desperately trying to repel the enormous horde pressing in toward them. Balls of flame streaked through the air and exploded with brilliant flashes in the sea of monsters. Lightning raked through their ranks, and the ground trembled as jagged spikes erupted from it.

Tendrils of mental energy swept over the Corruption’s army in unison with the spells, interrupting their connection to the Ether just before the barrages struck. Each wave of attacks tore through the army, killing hundreds of enemies.

And still, they pressed on. Barriers of light and dark magic glowed dimly under their pressing mass, the only thing separating the majority of the mages from the monsters attacking them.

Strangely, not all of the monsters looked like they were even Corrupted. A solid half of them were just normal monsters, as far as Damien could tell. It was easy to spot the warped, pale forms of the Corruption lumbering amongst them.

A huge spout of magma exploded in the middle of the enemy ranks, washing out and solidifying around the Corruption, freezing it in place, and Damien caught a glimpse of Quinlan as she leapt into the fray, molten whips flashing around her and carving apart the Corruption.

Damien and Sylph leaped into action. He Warp Stepped past the line of mages, appearing in the midst of the monsters. Void swelled within his body, and he thrust his hands outward, directing it like a conductor. “Shatter.”

Lines of black energy zigzagged out from his hands, vanishing into the horde around him. Screams filled the air as they cracked, snapping space and anything in their path. Dozens of monsters crumpled to the ground, seriously wounded.

Even as the Corruption started to heal the ones that it could, Henry’s mental energy washed over the area like a blanket, smothering all of them. Sylph flashed across the field, moving so quickly that she was standing beside Damien before he’d even fully registered the movement.

All the monsters in a wide circle around them crumpled, falling dead to the ground. A blast of magma threw a smoking Devourer beast across the ground and Quinlan spun toward them, readying a spell. Her eyes widened and she lowered her hands.

“Damien! Sylph! You’re back?”

An ape-like monster lunged at her, but a spear of lava shot out from behind her, impaling it through the eye before it could get close. Its body sizzled and popped as it melted away.

“Right on time, apparently,” Damien said. “Aren’t you supposed to be with the support team?”

“We couldn’t afford to hold back any longer,” Quinlan replied. She thrust her hands forward and a wave of lava bubbled up from the ground. It crashed down over a large section of monsters, filling the air with the smell of burnt meat and furious screaming. She staggered, bending over to catch her breath for a moment. “I don’t know what’s going on, but they suddenly started fighting much harder than they had been. We’re losing ground, so we couldn’t afford to spare anyone.”

Screams rose up from the line behind them. Damien formed a dozen overloaded gravity spheres just out of range of the mages and detonated them, ripping through the ranks of the horde. Once again, Henry kept them from healing, and none of them rose from the corpse-laden ground.

Spells rained down on the monsters once again, shaking the ground around them. Henry’s wings flapped, lifting Damien just far enough into the air to avoid losing his balance. His mage armor warped as Henry took over it, blocking a strike from a Corrupted monster in the shape of a huge stone mantis.

The eye in the center of his armor snapped open, and a dozen tiny splits in reality carved the mantis into shreds. It crumbled to the ground.

“Let’s just focus on killing as many of them as we can,” Henry said. “Corruption or not, these things are still fairly weak. We can clear them out no problem.”

The horde surged forward once more, and Damien and Sylph raced to meet them. The sky rumbled far above as black clouds eclipsed the sun. Lightning crackled within them, and Damien lost himself in the flow state of battle as rain started to pour down on both armies.

The teeming masses seemed to meld together into one endless monster. Damien wasn’t sure how much time passed, or how much Ether he still had left. All he knew is that he called to the Void, and the Void answered. Broken runes fluttered around him, dipping in and out of a whirlwind of churning energy.

Damien wasn’t sure when it happened, but at one point, he turned to unleash a deluge of Void-infused lightning into their enemies, but there was nothing but a mound of broken corpses before him.

He spun, his eyes searching for a target. There was nothing. The Corruption was pulling back, and the monsters that had straggled behind to buy the others time to retreat had all died and were left smoking and shattered on the ground.

Damien slowly let the Void fade from his fingertips. His tattoos pulsated, dimming slightly but remaining clearly visible on his skin. If he hadn’t been certain before, he was now. They weren’t going anywhere.

“Sylph?” Damien called, looking around battlefield and grimacing at the acrid stench of death that reached his nose. He was completely covered in gore and viscera. Henry had done a brilliant job of keeping him from getting injured, but that had done little to keep him clean. He prepared to extend a tendril of mental energy to locate her.

“Over here,” Sylph said, shimmering out of her camouflage beside him. Somehow, despite carnage around them, Sylph was almost entirely unsplattered. “You started slinging magic a bit too aggressively at the end, and I wasn’t certain if you could tell the difference between me and one of our enemies. I thought it best to keep a little distance unless you needed the help, so I’ve just been taking care of the things you didn’t get.”

“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Actually, scratch that. I do.”

Sylph’s eyes fell to the markings covering him. “I couldn’t imagine what.”

“Like them?” Damien asked with a weary grin.

Sylph raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. “We’ll see if they grow on me. Did you feel like you were losing control during the fight?”

“Not really.” Damien shook his head. “More like I just got really involved in it. I never lost track of who was on my side. It was a flow state more than a berserker rage.”

“That’s a relief. You returning to that Void-fugue state is the last thing we need. No trouble with emotions?”

“Nothing beyond what was there before.”

“Right. We should probably regroup with the others and see how bad the damage was, then.”

Damien glanced around the tall hills of corpses surrounding them. “If it was anything like it was here, this is going to take forever to clean up.”

Sylph pulled a tooth that had been lodged in Damien’s mage armor out and flicked it to the side. “So long as we aren’t the ones that have to clean it up. You need a shower.”

“How’d you manage to avoid getting dirty?” Damien asked, Warp Stepping into the air to scope their surroundings. Henry’s wings thumped, buying him enough time to spot a group of Blackmist professors and students gathering a short distance away.

“I was faster than the blood was,” Sylph replied. “Also, wind armor. It’s got its uses.”

“The way you say that seems to imply that I don’t,” Henry said. “I’d like it to be very clear that I take offense to that.”

“You take offense to everything,” Sylph said. She darted off in the direction of the other mages and Damien teleported after her. The group was fairly large, with Quinlan and several members from the support group among their number.

Xil flinched as Damien arrived, an icy blade forming in the air above her hand before she spotted Sylph. Her eyebrows rose and she reevaluated Damien, allowing the Ether to slip away and letting the spell drop.

“Damien? You look… different.”

“I was going to say awful,” Gaves said. He leaned heavily on Bella’s shoulder, his face several shades paler than normal. Judging by the massive rips in his clothes, he’d taken some serious wounds and had only recently been healed. “Decent enough tattoos, though. You look brutal.”

“You look dangerous. Moreso than usual,” Quinlan corrected. “I don’t know what happened, but you and Sylph arrived just on time. I thought we were going to get overrun.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Sylph asked. “The professors and the rest of the support team?”

“You just missed Dredd,” Gaves said. “He rushed off a few minutes ago when it became clear that the monsters were falling back. I think he mentioned something about reinforcements getting here earlier than expected.”

“I don’t think he was talking about the two of you,” Xil added. “He took Kat with him. I haven’t seen the rest of the professors since the fighting started.”

Damien grunted. “Is anyone we know dead?”

“Not as far as I know,” Xil replied. “But I haven’t seen anyone but us recently either. After that last attack, I’ve got no idea. If everyone got hit like we did…”

Damien’s senses tingled, warning him as a red portal drew itself into the air beside them. He readied his Ether, only allowing it to lower when Dredd emerged from within the portal. His knuckles were white around his staff and the man looked more tired than Damien had ever seen him. Dredd’s eyes caught on Damien’s tattoos, then he tore them away to scan the battlefield.

“The Seed is dead?”

Damien nodded. “How’d the rest of the fight go?”

“Better than expected. Much better,” Dredd replied. He shoved his staff deeper into the ground and a faint red disk expanded from its side, forming a makeshift chair for the professor to slump into. “The Queen’s army was freed up considerably earlier than we had thought they would be. A few hours ago, the Corruption’s army changed tactics, becoming far more aggressive than they had been. They basically stopped trying to regenerate themselves, and most of the locations with fewer attackers swept them apart.”

“That sounds like good news,” Xil said, her tone rising with hope. “Right?”

“It’s good, for now. The problem is that we don’t understand why the Corruption would do that,” Dredd said. “It’s completely illogical, and that means we probably don’t understand something. We need to figure out what we’re missing before we get shown the hard way.”

“Most of the Corruption isn’t particularly clever,” Damien supplied. He sat down on a pile of rubble that had once been a Corrupted monster and stretched his neck to try and loosen it. “Maybe Second wasn’t controlling them for some reason?”

“Perhaps,” Dredd allowed. “We’ll find out, one way or another. The Corrupted army hasn’t completely retreated. They’ve just pulled back, and I doubt they’re going anywhere anytime soon. The scale of that attack was vastly beyond just a skirmish. They want something. Speaking of which, Damien, I’d suggest you tread carefully.”

“Why would – ah. You’re not talking about the Corruption.”

Dredd grunted, suddenly finding the callouses on his hands fascinating. “Just watch yourself. Battlefields aren’t safe for anyone. Especially when the fight isn’t over yet.”

The professor pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. The energy chair blinked out and he tugged his staff out of the ground. “I need to report back to the base camp and confirm that we didn’t suffer any casualties. Is everyone fully prepared?”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to get any worse there. I’m surprised you decided to rest here instead of taking us right back, actually. Like you said, there could still be monsters or the like around,” Xil said. “What do we need to be prepared for back in the camp that we didn’t have to face out here?”

“It’s because he’s trying to avoid something at the camp. Delph, probably,” Quinlan said with a small grin. “Or maybe Kat.”

Gaves’ eyes narrowed. He gritted his teeth and steadied himself on his own weight, letting go of Bella. “No. It’s the Queen, isn’t it? She’s already set up in the base camp?”

Dredd tapped his staff on the ground and traced a red portal in the air with an end. It sprung open with a hiss and he nodded into it. “So she has, and she’s taken control of the army during the duration of her stay. We’re expected to report back as soon as we can so she can determine what she has to work with. It wouldn’t do to keep her waiting any longer. Time to go, children.”