CC 9: Tenacity ~ Twenty

*Wham!*

“Wahh!” Joe was startled from his focus, tossing himself back from the table and throwing his fists in the air as the horrendously loud sound came again. “What is that? Was there an attack? Or… someone’s just knocking, aren't they?”

Hoping that they hadn't been trying to get his attention for too long, the Ritualist rushed over to the door and threw it open, revealing the smug face of Bauen and the slightly exasperated faces of the humans that had been waiting. The Dwarf chuckled at Joe's flustered expression, “Were you asleep in there? Took me knocking on the door with ol’ reliable here to bring you running. Just like old times.”

There was a crowbar in the engineer's hand, which he was lightly tossing up and down. Joe's eyes shifted slightly to the side, accessing his building's information. He grunted slightly in annoyance as he realized that his door had taken five points of durability damage. “Pretty sure you never needed to use a crowbar to get my attention in the past.”

“Well, I'm pretty sure I've never been standing waiting on you while my beard hair froze to my chest.” Came the immediate counter.

Deciding against getting into a verbal spar at the moment, as his mind was still half on his water cycling project, Joe joined the others in the bitter air—instantly feeling apologetic about making them wait for him. “Thank you all so much for being patient with me, I've been trying to figure out some quality of life things I can do for everyone living here. Still, I didn't mean to take so long, I know we all want to get this up and running before the next Beast wave.”

No one had actually complained about being kept in the cold, but his words definitely helped melt the frigid expressions on their faces. Bauen pointed up and into the distance with his crowbar, “The best view you're going to get of the walls is over there. I've arranged for some porters to walk with us today. They’re bringing a few sets of ladders that we can use to get up there, then pull up and lay over the gap so we can walk between the walls.”

Moments like this reminded Joe exactly why it was so important to have a group of people with different skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses. If he needed to be the one to get people up top, he probably would've ended up grabbing a long rope, jumping up there, and dragging people to the top. As to getting them across the walls? Joe thought about that for a long few seconds, faintly smiling at the images in his mind of attempting to leap across while holding someone in his arms, and causing them both to slam into the ground anywhere from thirty to forty feet below them.

The porters were waiting for them, and as soon as the group arrived, they were on the move. When the entirety of the group was atop the wall, they began walking along it, planning out their positioning. To Joe's surprise, he had very little input at the moment. Socar asked him to provide a variety of the rituals that he could create, their effective range without any additional boosting, and the type of Elemental Affinities that each of the rituals would possess.

Not completely comfortable about revealing the entirety of his arsenal, Joe still presented a solid dozen options. From there, Socar and Heartpiercer begin discussing, arguing about various placement, targeting ability, whether they should rely on a potential range boost or not, and how they could pack in as many rituals as possible without disrupting the formation that the Mage wanted to set everything up in. As the conversation grew more heated, Joe and Bauen took a few steps back.

Their communication was silent. Joe held up an empty coffee mug at the Dwarf, raising an eyebrow before having AutoMate appear and fill it with a near-boiling brew. There was only a moment of hesitation to be polite, and the Dwarf nodded firmly. By the time he took the cup, it had already cooled down enough that it could be carefully sipped. Joe felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see the two porters looking at him hopefully. Always happy and ready to share the joys of coffee, the Ritualist pulled out a couple of coffee-elemental-rejected Ebonsteel mugs and handed them over after they were filled.

The four of them sipped their coffee and enjoyed the persistent daylight, watching as the conversation between the other humans reached a strange point. Heartpiercer shoved Socar in the middle of jabbing her finger at a corner position and shouting how the ritual needed to have a slowing effect so that the other rituals could target creatures from all angles, but Socar’s reflexive retaliation in kind sent her stumbling backward and off the edge of the wall.

“Abyss! Retrieve!” The Mage pointed at the falling woman, and a laser pointer created a red dot on her chest. The cat that was draped around his neck lept off, zooming through the air like a stinger missile and landing on the Archer. An instant later, the two of them were teleported back to the top of the wall, where Heartpiercer landed heavily. The cat jumped off of her, resuming its position on Socar’s neck.

“That was amazing!” Joe called out in awe. “You have a ‘Teleport Other’ spell? I don't even have a ‘Teleport Self’ spell! Can you teach me? Also, if you two can't be professional about this, we're going to have some serious issues. Seriously, either one of you could've been falling there, and we're what? An hour in?”

“Sorry.” Socar’s apology was heartfelt, and the mumbled reply he earned from Heartpiercer could have passed for the same word. The Mage turned to Joe, and the Ritualist carefully ignored the trembling in his hands, as the adrenaline of the moment was clearly washing over the man. “Unfortunately, my magic is bound up in my companion animal. I provide instruction and power, then the spell is cast through Nimue here.”

“Ni-mew?” Joe waited for a reaction, but the Mage only nodded in agreement that he'd said the name correctly. “Isn't that the witch from Arthurian legend that bound Merlin for all time?”

“Yup. I was struggling with what to name her, but that came to me in a dream. I thought it was fitting.” Socar reached up and pet his cat, earning a loud purr; very loud, almost as though it was a hint to Joe that he should stop speaking.

“Pff.” Heartpiercer stood up and brushed the dirt off her clothes. “Sounds like your cat is the Mage, and is just humoring your power fantasy of being a wizard.”

Joe looked away, pretending to admire the morning daylight so that he wouldn't give anything away. After composing himself, he looked back and noticed that the cat appeared to be glaring at him. He was certain it was just a coincidence.

From there, the next few hours were much more calm. They crawled about the tops of the walls, making notes and setting points where the rituals would be placed. When they had enough determined that Socar guaranteed the formation would activate properly, Joe found the nearest mark and started setting up his ritual.

“Ritual of Dark Lightning.” Joe had been able to create this version at the Student rank, which gave it plenty of power, range, and reusability. The only downside was that he needed to use approximately one-tenth of a Rare Core each time he set up a Student rank ritual. Even though that efficiency was up from his previous best of one-sixth of a core, he only had two cores at that rarity at the moment, and had been hard at work making buildings. Joe needed to carefully choose which position he'd place these higher powered versions in. They’d decided that until better cores were acquired, they would focus the stronger ones on rituals that would damage an area, instead of a single target.

Between the four members of this group, it was easy to decide on the positioning, set it up, and empower the circles. After only a minor back and forth on morality, they decided that it would be perfectly acceptable to let this magic strike out at any living creature that walked through the walls along the ground; so long as it wasn't a human or a Dwarf. Anything outside of that category was fair game at this moment. Flush with feelings of success, they moved to the next part of the wall they’d marked for getting a ritual.

Joe realized an issue that he was going to be having nearly immediately. Student-ranked rituals were powerful enough, stable enough, that they could operate in Jotunheim easily. The requirement of having a core for the initial creation was a bottleneck, but otherwise wasn't a huge issue. Yet, now that he wanted to make lesser versions, he'd need to account for stabilization. Making a Novice or Beginner ritual would be at least as expensive to place as setting up an Apprentice rank; his previous tests had shown him that they needed to be stabilized to the Apprentice rank or they would violently discharge.

After explaining this issue to the others, he earned a few looks that he wasn't sure how to interpret. Smarminess, perhaps? Socar clapped him on the shoulder, illuminating him with his next words. “I suppose that means the rest of us are done working on this for the day. In fact, we can just leave you this map, and you can come back and finish the job on your own when you're ready, right?”

Joe was lost for words, but only for half a second. Then he crossed his arms and sighed. “You guys suck.”

“Eh, this way you get to be cold for a while while we wait on you to finish up.” Heartpiercer jokingly told him, letting Joe know that she was still not perfectly happy about that. He hoped that completing the work without further complaint would erase that debt.

Bauen’s face fell into a contemplative expression as he eyeballed the walls, raising a hand to gauge the speed and chill of the air. Pressing his hand to the stone, he closed his eyes, “Quiet down for a moment. I’m attempting to sense the vibrations generated by people walking around, and scale that up to what will be felt as supermassive beings stomp about. Have you considered how you’re going to keep the stabilization cubes in place?”

Joe was uncertain how to answer that. “You know, I'm not sure? I've never needed to make defensive emplacements that had to last for any length of time. Usually I've just used my rituals as traps: one-off consumables that I was perfectly fine losing if they were destroyed or ran out of power. With these? I guess I'll need to figure something out. Do you know anyone down there that makes glue, maybe tape?”

“Yeah, I'm with Bauen on this one.” Socar had clear unease in his tone. “I don't know how I feel about the idea of relying on the monsters being beat back by powerful magical effects that are literally held together with duct tape.”

“I could get a spray bottle and freeze the cubes to the top of the wall with a few spritzes?” Joe looked around the group, counting up the number of winces he saw. Still, no one had anything better to offer, so he tried again. “I'll see about getting an earth Mage that can close the stone around the cubes-”

“No,” the Dwarf interrupted. “You probably haven't run into this issue yet, but that would nullify the stabilization effect of the cubes. They need to have a perfect line of sight to each other.”

Joe offered a thumbs up, his bland facial expression not shifting in the slightest. “Oh, look! I'm all out of ideas! I'll try to think of something, but maybe you guys could help me out on that? If I have to fix this on top of everything else, I guarantee you I'm going with glue.”

He didn't mention that he was perfectly fine with them having to work while he was working; and tried to keep his lips from curling at that thought. Bauen nodded at Socar, “I'm an engineer, and I remember Havoc mentioning that you had experience with variant architecture. If Heartpiercer Mcshootypants chips in some advice, I'm sure the three of us can figure something out. Let’s continue this conversation around a heat generator in a tent bubble.”

“Then I’ll go make more cubes.” Tasks decided, the group split up. Joe looked into the distance and found the smithy, then Omnivaulted directly off the wall—greatly enjoying the gasp of shock that he heard coming from someone behind him.

“No matter how often I hear that, it never gets old. At least Socar didn't panic-send his cat to retrieve me.”