FMH: Everything ~ Twenty-Three

- Taylor -

Taylor was not excited to fight in this war. There was no benefit to her, nor for her team, and even the enemy armies were treating it as a training exercise more than a real war. Even so, she wouldn't abandon her countrymen to the fate that was awaiting them if her team departed from the field of battle.

She hoped everyone would be on the same page as her, as she took a deep breath and started directing her friends into what she hoped would be the most effective battle position. Unsurprisingly, their resident Murderhobo would be taking point, Andre would be entirely focused on solidifying his connection to the land and defending against other Druids who would be pushing to break his control. Zed would… Taylor looked around, noticing that the Bard who had been by her side only a few minutes ago had vanished without a trace. Seething internally, she hissed through gritted teeth, “I guess Zed will be doing whatever he wants to be doing.”

If he influenced their battle the way he normally did, providing overwatch and whispering into their ears of threats and positioning, she would be happy. Even so, she knew better than to count on it. Zed was under the same orders as they were, and her biggest fear had been that he would completely abandon their team and make his way to the capital of the dynasty on his own.

There was even a good chance that he would someday succeed, but he would take the orders literally, spending as much time practicing his Masteries as he could while traveling closer to the seat of power and finding the missing princess. She only hoped Zed wouldn’t make that same realization.

*Boom.*

As Andre had clearly warned, there truly wasn’t much time between his announcement and the arrival of a squad of Ascenders. Clearly, they had been stationed near the border as a quick-reaction force, but each of them, even from this distance, was exuding pure excitement and bloodlust. If Luke wasn’t standing directly in front of her, she would have thought he was staring her down from their opponents’ side of the battleground. The Murderhobo stretched and cracked his neck. “Those guys look as bored as I feel.”

“The fact that you're looking at them as though they're real people concerns me.” Andre quietly released the thought that had been trapped in his head. Taylor eyed the Druid sharply, but he explained without hesitation, “Come on, you know as well as I do that every time Luke looks at someone and views them as a ‘real’ person, that means that they have extremely dense personal power. Even the Royal Guard looked like fluffy caricatures, so what level of power are we thinking that group is going to bring to bear against us?”

“Three of them look green, like you do,” Luke pointed out the Druids to him. Taylor confirmed after a moment, her eyes easily as sharp as the Murderhobo’s. “The rest of them wear a bandolier of dried bones and meat, so they could be Necromancers or Dog Tamers.”

“Going by the theme and proximity of the Dynasty of Dogs,” Andre let out a light chuckle, “I can only hope that they're Necromancers, so they’re weaker than the others. I have my doubts. If that is their quick-reaction force, as Taylor seemed to suggest, we're likely looking at the command structure of this army. If a Lieutenant somehow didn't get crushed by you, what would a Captain, a Colonel, or a General look like?”

“A good time.”

“No.”

Taylor decided that their rambling had gone on long enough. “If one of them is truly a high level-commander, that means he’s also going to be an extremely powerful Doggutorēnā.”

“Gesundheit,” Andre called over.

“That is the title of their Ascenders,” Taylor explained impatiently. “Since they have the strongest ties to that world in the dynasty, they have the ability to create the etymology. It just doesn't easily translate to our language.”

“Doggu. Tah-rainer.” Luke broke it down into multiple syllables, frowning thoughtfully. “Seems like it would translate just fine as ‘dog trainer’. It’s actually somewhat refreshing to find a group of Ascenders who aren’t sniffing their own stink and swearing it smells like roses.”

“You know I like it when people are down to earth,” the Druid joined in on the joke.

For a moment, Taylor considered creating a portal and just leaving. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she reminded herself that these two irreverent men's lives weren’t the only ones at stake. “Luke, if there is anything that you can do to keep their attention off of the common people, I would appreciate it. I will try to defend against—what!”

A massive dog, easily fifty feet tall and thirty feet wide had materialized in front of the group they had been tracking. It bit the air and gently pulled back, and the atmosphere around them shifted, drawing in toward the dog. It took Taylor a moment to realize that it wasn’t the wind actually blowing, but rather her sense of the free-flowing mana of the area had changed. Before she could react to the shift, a massive Spell circle formed in front of the dog’s face, and a glowing orb of power began to pulsate in the center of the swiftly completing ring.

“Luke, throw me!” Taylor ordered, not getting a word of complaint from the Murderhobo as he grabbed her with both hands, spun, and launched her like a javelin directly at the giant, pulsing field of mana that had appeared practically out of nowhere. She wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to land, but that wasn't the issue at hand.

It only took two seconds of flight to reach the top of the parabolic arc before her trajectory started slowly drawing her downward. At that moment, a beam of mana lanced forward, directly toward where she had been standing in front of the command tent.

“Nullify!” It was unlikely that she would have needed to cast the Spell herself, as there was a built-in safety feature that would have activated the Spell as soon as she sensed the incoming danger. Still, she didn't want to risk any accidents, and as the Spell disintegrated harmlessly upon impact with her and was completely destroyed at the same time, she was glad that she had made that choice.

Even though the core of the Spell was broken, the land that it had traveled over was suffering greatly from its passing. Despite behaving as a beam, it had rained thick globules of corrosive dog slobber which landed on people below, their own countrymen, burning through flesh and leaving behind putrid, diseased corpses.

Meta-Magic has captured: Yelp of the Gelert (Tier seven). At the cost of 500 mana, create a beam of mana-infused air that will penetrate nearly any armor. In passing, the Yelp of the Gelert will rain acidic slobber that destroys and putrifies any flesh it encounters.

“Neat, can’t even use it.” It was just her luck that the first time the Spell captured an effect from an enemy, it would be too specialized to replicate. She was extremely perturbed to find that it hadn’t listed all of the different capabilities that the Spell could and should create. As far as she knew, there was no deviation from the Ascender formulae, where each Tier of Spell gave a specific benefit. Could it possibly be because she didn't understand the Spell or anything about it before capturing it? Could she only capture a fraction of its potential power? There were so many things to test about this new branch of magic. As much as she wanted to test her theory farther, run her hypothesis, she was currently falling.

As she now understood, the attack she had just blocked had created a funnel of moving air to continue outward, and Nullify had stripped the mana from it. However, that hadn’t canceled out the physics of the Spell itself. To her delight, the air continued onward, slowing her momentum and even buoying her backward as though she were a kite flying in a hurricane. A quick glance confirmed that she was going to fall on her side of the border, so she spread her arms wide and tried to land as flat as possible.

Exactly as she had hoped, the grass reached out to break her fall, and the ground beneath turned into a soft sand that let her sink in without damaging her body. There was little chance of her being hurt either way, thanks to her Etheric Xenograft Potentia-enhanced body. Even so, it was nice to know that she had someone to rely on who would literally catch her when she fell. She bounced up to land gracefully on her feet, hurrying back to where her team had remained standing.

Zed had returned and was currently standing in front of Luke, hands flung out to the side while dodging in front of the big man whenever he started to make a motion to leave. The Bard looked over his shoulder at the sound of her approach, a relieved smile appearing on his face. “Look, everyone! Taylor is back!”

“What happened after I blocked that shot?” Taylor was nervous that they would need to continue combat; her trump card had been played immediately. Now it was going to be necessary to let the attacks land where they were aimed, and she had no way to stop them.

Andre had been keeping an eye on the overall battle, so it came as no surprise that he was the one to respond. “They looked more confused than anything? I think that was a fairly demoralizing effect for the enemy army, considering the attack came from their own leadership and only damaged their own people, while one of ours canceled it out. I don't know if you heard all of the soldiers from the Hollow Kingdom cheering for you, but they were. Oh, last thing–that giant dog vanished.”

“Must have been a canine likeness that creates an effect but is unable to actually do any fighting on its own.” Taylor mulled over their situation but didn’t see an easy answer on how to move forward. Thanks to her team’s greatly enhanced senses, it was obvious to them the exact moment that the opposing Ascenders began summoning additional dogs. The Mage looked over at Andre as he winced and grabbed at the side of his head, sinking to the ground in a lotus position.

“The Druids are working in concert to break my influence over this land.” He took a deep breath and smirked, his eyes already closed as power raced out from him. “I think they're going to have a very bad time. In fact, I’m gonna make sure of it.”

Taylor watched the border, where the earth had suddenly started trembling. The wall that had grown under Andre’s control began to buckle, then stabilized. It was clear that a monumental amount of effort was being expended, and she hoped that her friend would be able to succeed.

First a trickle, then a flood of dogs began pouring from around the Dynasty Ascenders, mingling with the ranks of the infantry and howling, barking, and nipping at ankles until the entire invasion force was moving forward as one. Fear wasn't Taylor’s preferred motivator, but in situations like this, it was obviously effective. She turned her attention to her kingdom's forces, realizing that if the wall fell, they would be overrun in no time flat. “Luke, you and I are going to go and even the odds. Zed, keep a lookout for us and protect Andre while he works.”

“Before you go…” Andre cracked one eye while keeping the other tightly shut, looking over at Luke. “Just in case, can I get a bottle of liquid mana?”

The Murderhobo hesitated, studied the amassing enemy forces, and gently snarled. He pulled out a dark blue waterskin and gingerly nestled it on the dirt in front of the Druid. “It's not just liquid mana in there. If you have to open this, contain it so that you don't just die.”

Luke seemed nervous at handling the container, making the entire team stare at it in great concern. With no choice but to follow her own instructions, Taylor and Luke hastened toward the impending battle. Even so, she couldn't help herself and glanced back over her shoulder several times. “I hope I didn't leave behind a situation even more dangerous than the one I'm heading into.”

“Same,” the Murderhobo agreed, not at all assuaging her fears.