Fate Points - Ch 84 (Patreon)

They continued on. Tom focused on the walls and as he got closer, he could see the angry expressions that Everlyn had noticed. Something big had gone down. Absently, he judged the distance while tossing the pebble in his hand. With his new spell, he was sure he could hit the wall. A hundred fifty metres that should be doable, but his control was not enough for him to do it accurately. It might only be a one or two percent probability, but he didn’t want to risk missing and accidentally killing a sentry.

Plus, given the tension, he imagined throwing the rock could cause issues. Though it would be funny.

“Incoming from the right.” The yell caught everyone by surprise and Tom spun the pebble suddenly ready for an alternative deployment.

Tom immediately looked and saw what the scout had spotted. Emerging from the small patch of trees was what he guessed was the local equivalent of wolves. The monsters came loosely up to his waist. Four legs, twin tails, and appeared to be built for speed and agility. It was a large group, and the nearest of them was rank thirteen. It didn’t look any larger than any of the others, so he figured that was their indicative level. Tom thought about throwing the pebble but decided there was too much chance of the quick beasts evading it. With a crackle of energy, his spear appeared in his hands. Throw Rock probably wasn’t the best use of his magic and with the possibility of another murder in camp Tom really did not want to reveal his extra school of magic if he didn’t have to.

“Weaknesses?” he asked Everlyn next to him.

“Weak to fire and darkness,” she said with a raised voice so everyone could hear her. “They’re rank thirteen and their tails hit hard.”

Tom had heard enough. He shut his eyes, channelled the spell, and punched his consciousness into the elemental plane. Already his mind was considering what he wanted. Support for a few minutes and why a lesser lightning elemental might have been the better choice he went for a wisp. Tom did not want to mana less if it descended into weapon to claw fighting.

The dark elemental plane was all around him. This low down the environment was not directly hostile to him, but his senses were restricted, which meant searching for wisps was futile. The denizens were unaffected, and he was confident he would get contacted soon enough. Sure enough, within moments, a wisp pressed against him, and Tom did not even bother testing its personality. As he hadn’t pushed close the layer separation, it was probably the standard playful version, but in the dark plane he did not have the bargaining power he possessed in the planes he could hunt down alternatives to negotiate with.

He offered the contract.

Five minutes, one hundred and fifty mana.

The rejection flowed through instantly, but Tom could feel the undertones of desire from the wisp. It wanted to accept. It was worried the refusal was the wrong choice, but it felt that such terms would be a net loss, and while the idea was exciting, it couldn’t afford to go backwards.

Ten extra mana.

The rejection this time was even more tentative. But it said no its mind forming on one point. Fun was not worth losing progress.

Four and a half minutes.

The wisp accepted, and the contract bound it as Tom’s energy flooded out of him to satisfy his part of the contact. He snapped back into the present and his companions had shifted into position.

A loose circle, melee fighters on the outside and everyone else within the protective confines.

They only had thirteen combat classes in their group and six other melee specced. That was not enough to protect everyone and the wolves, or at least what he was calling wolves had spread out to encircle them while he had been casting the spell. There were a dozen and, given their rank, this would not be a simple fight. Of course, rank was a very grey assignment process where skills, abilities and how you used them often mattered more than raw attributes. Theses monsters were most likely possessed animal levels of intelligence which was a long way from being sapient. The relative power balance between them was unclear, but Tom was confident they could beat them easily.

Kill, he thought to the wisp, imagining the wolves. It shot off like it was launched from a slingshot and he joined the outer circle spear in his hand. “Will lightning hurt them?”

“A little,” Everlyn admitted. She had probably wanted to hide her new bow like he had, but the threat was too much. She had it out and ready tension already on the bowstring. Once more, he was impressed by the duality that it projected to his senses. If he didn’t know better, he would assume it was dull and ordinary.

Tom forced his attention back to the external threat.

Crack.

She released an arrow, and it sounded like a bullet going off. It was as if the wisp and the arrow were the starter’s signal. All the surrounding wolves charged at them simultaneously. Though not the one that Everlyn had targeted, it went down with a feathered end poking out of its chest.

Crack.

Two wolves were running straight at Tom and neither Everlyn’s with her archery nor his wisp was there to help. In response, he focused on his form. He had sufficient mana, and he knew he was hard to kill even when physically outclassed like he was. Tom watched both simultaneously, sliding his feet left to ensure that the wolf could not get past him while his spear held in his right hand made it too dangerous for the other wolf to avoid him. As expected, his actions forced them to focus exclusively on him.

Years of battle instincts gave him crystal clarity.

They were about to attack.

Together.

One high, one low, Tom predicted, and both from different sides.

With a thought, a small domain of Earth Sense radiated out in front of him. All the sensory input was turned off, as he didn’t want the distraction. For these two, all that he needed was the smidgen of help from the Hostile Earth component.

They crouched to prepare to leap at him.

The one on his left tripped as the ground gave way under its feet. The other was unaffected as it sprang gazelle like at him. He pivoted and lashed out at its throat Power Strike,infusing the tip of the spear to make the blow count. The wolf seemed not to care. Its tail flicked and hit his weapon and knocked it aside. The force imparted was shocking the Tom remembered Everlyn’s warning and now his entire right side was exposed to the wolf.

Tom did not panic his offensive weapons could not stop the monster, but if he lifted his shoulder and turned, then it would bite his shoulder instead of his more delicate throat. As he moved to protect himself, he watched the wolf, which had tripped. His mind redirected the five lightning spears he had sent its way. They all shifted their attack. Only be a couple of centimetres but when you talking mortal vs flesh wound even those couple of centimetres mattered. The five spears plunged into the creature’s neck. The force of his magic attack made it falter slightly and there was blood bubbling from the holes his magic spears had left. They were probably not mortal wounds, but for now at least he had time to respond to the wider battle.

The second wolf’s mouth gaped wide open, long canines that glowed with magic about to tear into him. There was a click as he cast the spell and his shoulder shifted to stone.

The wolf slammed into him with more force than something that size should have been able to muster. He felt intense pressure where the teeth latched on, but the hard rock held against the teeth. His mana flared as another lightning spear formed above his head and plunged toward its eyes. Tom expected the tail to intercept, but it must have seen it late. It released its grip on his shoulder and twisted so the spear was mostly caught in the fur on the back of its skull.

Tom grinned to himself when he saw the blood in the animal’s mouth, teeth cracking against the stone, but there was no time for anything but survival. He measured his mana use. The battle was chaotic and situational awareness was paramount and the mini domain he could create with Spark told him that for now he was safe.

His direct enemy landed and Tom launched a snap kick as he moved his spear around to get it back into action.

The wolf ignored the kick.

Mistake.

Partial Stone Skinactivated again. This time it was his whole lower leg. It was rank thirteen but weighed less than Tom, and the surprisingly hard kick lifted the animal off its feet.

Crack!

Everlyn was still safe and unleashing her deadly arrows and they had to be deadly. If she had got the same bonuses that he had, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could kill a rank sixteen with a single shot.

His target was distracted, and he spotted an opportunity.

He channelled everything into his thrust, having instinctively recognised the opening that his kick had created by lifting the wolf just off the ground. Tom did the calculations. His spear was deliberately off target, but the tail should come around and try to deflect it. Tom’s body weight was positioned to resist that blow.

Thump.

The force of the tail radiated along the shaft. The hit had been more from the ground than he predicted, but the bulk of the defensive parry struck as anticipated. It pushed his spear into the position Tom had wanted it to be initially, or at least close to. The energy of Power Strike filled the weapon, and he focused on realigning the tip.

It slammed into the creature’s shoulder and then went through it to pin it to the ground. Usually, he would have pulled the strike, but he did not know how easily these things would die. His spear hit the stone underfoot and when he twisted back, he felt the weight of the wolf on his spear.

The blow was not through the heart. The tail had knocked the weapon far enough off course to save the creature’s life and even his attempt to realign had been insufficient.

His weapon was trapped.

He wrenched it violently, trying to take the spear into soul storage as he did so. The energy did not respond for a moment and then the shaft slipped slightly, and the spear dematerialised now that it was no longer attached to anything.

He should have checked the blow. He was not the kind of fool to lose their weapon inside something. Tom held himself to higher standards.

His Spark domain warned him when a wolf crossed it, its pace and direction clearly showed it was going for him. He tilted his head to check and sure enough an undamaged wolf was targeting his calves.

For the third time in the brief fight, he flexed partial stone skin to convert his lower leg while twisting and manifesting his spear back in his hands high over head preparing to thrust it down.

Pressure potentially even more than what happened on his shoulder caught clamped onto his calf. Then the wolf yanked him back.

Stone skin or not, the unexpected pull made him slip. For a moment, instead of stabbing downwards, he was forced to stabilize his position.

Crack!

The tug on his leg vanished.

When he looked down, an arrow had gone through the wolf’s head. Everlyn was clearly monitoring him just like his Spark domain had been keeping track of her. He would thank her latter through the wolf had not been a threat. If it had jerked him off his feet, it would have been different, as then he would not have had leverage for his spear thrusts. Through Lightning Spears or Spark would probably save him, even in that situation. It was all a moot point. Everlyn had killed it.

Tom banished the stone skin absently healing the minor puncture wounds the wolf had left and spun around looking for additional enemies.

Everlyn’s arrow looked strange, and it became less substantial in a matter of moments. Conjured arrows were a useful skill especially ones that could punch through higher ranks like this. Straight through the centre of the skull, too. He was sure she had the skill to have gone for the eye shot but obviously trusted her equipment and had determined that her shots were powerful enough to risk going for an instant kill through the skull bone rather than the equally deadly but potentially less quick acting arrow via the eye.

Tom assessed the battlefield. The wolf he had hit with lightning spears had succumbed to the puncture wounds his spell had left. He spun back around. The one he had stabbed through the chest was struggling to get to its feet. A tail gone courtesy of Aryan who was facing it. Currently, he was trying to bait it into over extending. The wolf only had eyes for the two axes the man wielded.

Tom thrust; the wolf didn’t see him coming. Rank thirteen, he reminded himself, and putting aside prejudices around how unarmoured the enemy monster looked he empowered his blow with Power Strike otherwise his spear would bounce off its rank thirteen vitality. The spear plunged through the wound he had already created but at a different angle that let him target the heart. This time he did not over commit delivering the thrust into the targeted muscle and then he pulled his weapon clear in a single smooth motion.

Tom watched the dying wolf with Spark domain while his eyes darted around to identify alternative threats. Two humans were badly injured and down, but Clare was already supporting them. Apart from that, the rest of them were standing. Grumpy man had a gash on his leg that was not bothering him. Tanya defensive wounds on her arms but that meant they had got off surprisingly lightly given how strong their opponents had been.

He spotted two wolves dead due to what looked like arrow holes though neither had any visible arrows left in them. Then he glanced at the closest wolf and that insubstantial arrow that Tom had witnessed had faded away to nothing.

The two people who had gone down hurt were back on their feet healed to perfect health courtesy of Clare. Tanya and the grumpy guy had been healed by Cherry. Everyone was looking around for enemies, but the wolves were dead or fled. He counted the bodies. The full dozen wolves which had started the attack were dead. That clarified the terms of the engagement in Tom’s head. Despite their looks, they had been monsters, not beasts, so all of them had fought to the death. There had never been the potential for them to retreat only the highest levelled monsters had the intelligence to overcome their instincts. He continued his professional study of the battlefield.

It was weird to have been involved in this as part of a team. Tom was so used to finishing a fight and knowing pretty much everything that had happened. With allies, it was different. As he studied the battlefield, more details leapt out to him. There was clear evidence of the damage that his wisp had done. One wolf had even failed to reach the defensive lines. A dark circle that looked some alien beam technology had struck its chest evidence of where the wisp had burrowed in and then out. Another wolf, dead by sword wounds, had its hind quarters withered as a result of a dark attack. Almost certainly a wisp once more. A third with damage to the eye.

It had done a good job. With a wave of thanks, he dismissed it back to its home plane. It had come more out of a sense of fun than strategy, but being returned a full three minutes early made its trip lucrative instead of neutral.

“Four,” Everlyn told him her hands empty once more, the bow sent away to where it ever it went.

He only remembered the sound of four arrows being fired. “One kill per shot.”

“Yep. I could have got more, but I didn’t want to kill steal.”

She had beaten him, at least she would have if she had been more ruthless, but he ignored that. “I got at least two,” he waved at the two he had definitely killed. “Probably three,” he pointed at the wolf that had died with an extreme case of indigestion courtesy of the wisp. “And a couple more partials.” He gestured at them. “I might have beaten you. We’ll have to check the experience logs to confirm either way.”

“So competitive.”

Tom laughed and pulled her close. “Yep.”