CHAPTER 552: NECESSITIES

A goblin engineer’s junkyard wasn’t a great place to fight.

“Many explosives,” Lodie warned, just as he was heading down. “Oh and um, acid.”

“Don’t forget the defective constructs!” chimed in one of her cousins, or brothers.

“Mm, yes.” Lodie nodded. “Killer-bots. Very dangerous.”

Mason’s mind was filled with questions, like ‘why would you put a fully functioning killer robot in a junkyard?’. But since this was the apocalypse, and these were goblin engineers, he really didn’t see the point.

“OK. We’ll avoid going in. We set up a kill zone, and I’ll start trying to…”

“Pull,” Garet said. Mason quirked an eyebrow and the ‘Tactician’ shrugged. “That’s what we’d call it in a video game. You ‘pull’ the mobs, er, the enemy, to ground you prefer.” He grinned. “Rangers are usually good at it.”

Mason took a deep breath. “OK. I’ll go ‘pull’. Phuong, you have any thoughts about where? I thought maybe…”

“Jason spears here with a gap.” The ex-soldier gestured between two big, rusty water towers, or something. “Garet’s smaller spearwall here.” He aimed at a flank. “We can spore the other flank. And the ranged can climb the towers for protection, jumping down if there’s too many flyers after them.”

“I can put some spores in the air, too,” Demi said. Mason looked between them and grinned.

“Sounds good. Be right back.”

There were six giant hellhounds this time, which wouldn’t be fun if they all came running. But they’d already shown how stupid they were. Mason figured if he could distract most of them, maybe get them chasing him or running down to the lava, he could ‘pull’ or direct one or two the way he wanted.

Traps weren’t likely to do enough alone, though they’d help. Spells were the most obvious option. His Grasping Frost, if used with a lot of mana and placed correctly, could probably cause a hell of a mess for the demons. Fortunately it looked like this was considered ‘natural’ terrain, so his arrows and traps wouldn’t take mana, on top of a host of other benefits.

After watching the creatures for a minute or two, he decided on the spell. Worst case scenario, he had to run those hounds all over the place while the others fought. No doubt Garet would have some stupid gamer word for that, too.

He moved closer to the ‘least busy’ side of the junkyard, using his Sleeves to camouflage himself as he crept up to a decent piece of ground with a clear view. There was a fair sized patch of clear ground around a bunch of barrels, which he needed to ‘draw’ the giant rune he intended.

When he’d sat for a several seconds without notice, he activated Trapmaking, watching the world light up with possibility. His power really liked that junkyard, and Mason blinked in confusion with the sheer volume of options. But it was too far to effect, so he settled for turning the outside of the fence into a barbed wire claymore.

Then he started channeling.

As before he slowly drew a huge symbol for Frost with his eyes, holding the visual image in his mind as Eve had taught him. Then he ‘stamped’ the tree symbol inside with a more vivid memory.

Magic pulsed around him, and he could tell it was getting stronger as he leveled. He hadn’t used much mana on that spell maybe ever, really only playing with it last back in the Maker’s hall outside the Green Sea.

This time he used a good half of his mana, expanding the circle out from the runes with some other, innate force. The spell finished, the magic swirling to life as the cold magic hissed with steam in the hot air.

Several soldiers and ‘elemental’ demons turned and stared in confusion, the hounds looking oblivious or too stupid to care. Mason didn’t give any of them time to think.

He stared at the nearest hound with Ranger’s Mark, then moved to a crouch and aimed, loosing a bullet-tipped Power Shot at it’s side, shooting straight for the (first of two) hearts.

The missile struck and vanished into the creature’s flank, piercing the heart and damn near punching halfway to the other. The demon roared and staggered, half its body sagging with weakness. It hadn’t seen what shot it, and turned in a circle as it thrashed and spun with rage.

Mason was happy to snipe. He kept low, hitting resting flyers, soldiers—anything that didn’t start to move. Demonic growls and shrieks of outrage and alarm filled the camp. Mason smiled as he kept shooting, sinking his planar arrows into red flesh like the medieval machine gun he was.

They finally spotted him, some of the new flyers shooting back with some kind of tail-spines. He turned and bolted down towards the edge of the junkyard, directing the flow of bodies right at his waiting spell.

A hound ran right in, and the magic exploded. Steam and writhing vines and tentacles ripped out of the rock like a frozen kraken. Mason blinked in surprise, then realized his title list was flashing with some activation.

[Divine Title: Where you are Gaia, I am Gaius. All natural powers enhanced in your mate’s presence.]

The new title was glowing green, and he couldn’t help but smile as he watched the tentacle-like vines grow twice as long as he’d expected, grasping at demons and lashing around the hound with ease. It was like a giant, frozen monster in the center of everything, snatching demons as they shrieked and slid to the ground.

He realized he may have overdone the mana.

This wasn’t so much a ‘pull back’ as a ‘direct assault’. But he kept on loosing arrows until two of the hounds burst through a non-trapped section of fence, heads all baying and growling as they saw him and ran in his direction. There were two more en route behind them, but he figured he could work with it.

Shooting as he ran, he led the first two up the hill towards the now obvious ‘divine’ spears. Power Shot recycled and he took a moment to aim, puncturing another beast’s heart right through the ribcage. It slowed, looking off balance and weakened like the other.

But he’d run out of time and took a run before leaping over the wall of spears. Seamus was sending a steady stream of fire from the tower, Tommaso tossing exploding potions, Demi up there doing…something.

Hound One crashed into the spears about as successfully as the other hounds. Soon it was impaled and thrashing, getting jabbed by spears and shot by flame until it stilled. The other veered and rammed right into a tower.

The metal shook but held. Dozens of flyers and soldiers were coming now, pointing and directing as they spread out to get around the spears.

“I’ll go distract some more hounds,” Mason shouted, not waiting for an answer. He leapt back over the spears so close to a few soldiers they stopped and gawked until he’d run by. This time Streak jumped after him, the huge wolf taking the time to bite a soldier demon’s whole head and carry him along kicking.

Mason kept his bow out, falling away from anything that attacked him, loosing on the run as he weaved his through and chased after the hounds. He dropped the meter on his boots, but only a little, just to test.

It helped. It definitely helped. The weight of the earth felt…different. Less than. It was similar to how he felt running through the woods, or the Fey—like the natural world were bending around him, letting him through.

The demons couldn’t touch him.

He weaved around them dropping targets, cycling through shots and ignoring the spikes and bits of flame they managed to hit him with. His ‘divine title’ was still glowing, and when he activated Aspect of the Cheetah he felt like he’d hit some kind of turbo boost.

This time he pulled out his Claws. He wanted demonic ichor spraying everywhere he went. He wanted these creatures seeing him coming and knowing they couldn’t beat him, but couldn’t escape. That there wasn’t a damn thing they could do.

Violent force shivered up his arms as he cut the humanoid demons down. A bull-like centaur version charged with long horns. Mason side-stepped and opened its whole flank with his curved sword, cutting off its leg above the hoof at the end.

Transformation was working now as the spikes and spells kept glancing off him. It was glowing, too, and he shivered as a cut sealed above his eye so fast he wasn’t sure it happened at all. He laughed and looked at the demon who’d hit him, holding his swords out to the sides. It turned and flew away.

“The hounds!” shouted a voice from his players. He turned to see two more of the big beasts running at the towers, and winced. He may have gotten a little distracted.

On the other hand, his players looked like they were doing fine. A bubbling mound of demons was scattered across Demi’s spore-zone, and he realized she probably had her own divine title, and pretty much all her powers were directly ‘nature’ oriented.

A lot of the spear walls were broken, but the melee players were out slaughtering anything that came near the towers.

In fact, it was the fire and spine shooting flyers that were the biggest problem. Alex’s shields were flashing all over the place, but using all his mana now was not a good idea. Mason was about to summon his bow again and go demonic bird hunting when little hairs stood on the back of his neck.

Streak howled in warning. Not that he needed to.

Across from the junkyard, in a spray of lava like some red whale was emerging from the sea, a huge creature rose from the pool.

This wasn’t necessary, whispered The Watcher’s voice, as the beast snorted steam and gripped the edge of the rock with claws the size of a cruise ship’s anchor. But if you won’t serve my master. Then you will perish with the rest of this world.

“And here I thought we were just getting to be friends.”

Mason took a breath and decided to ignore the giant lava-demon for the moment. Unless it had a lot of far-reaching magic, it would take time to reach them. He told Streak to come back through their bond, then whipped across the stone, filling flyers full of arrows.

----------------------------------------