Chapter: 754 - Battle in the Woods

Tala had never managed to figure out how to get a view into the Doman-Imithe while on this side of reality, but that hardly mattered.

The mere fact of their main opponent being the Black Legion meant that they had to act as if the Doman-Imithe were filled with enemies.

Anatalis’s voice was quiet. “I and my pack must wait until the Forest Spirit shows himself, or at the very least until his offspring begin to appear. An elk’s charge can slay a wolf if taken in the side.

“We will counter him or any of his offspring if they show up, but I will not sacrifice one of mine to lure him out.”

Tala grimaced. She didn’t like it, but she could understand. If one of the god-beasts was slain, they would likely take days to reconstitute, and they would likely reform far from here. “Understood. I’ll get it done.”

The army was still advancing, but they’d slowed to a measured walk.

Tala and Terry flickered forward, Rane lunging to come in behind them.

As Tala reached the edge of her aura and authority, she manipulated her gravity to allow herself to move forward in a more mundane manner as well.

That caused a smile to tug at her lips. Yeah, Tala, fifty-foot leaps is mundane.

-I mean… comparatively?-

Tala chuckled.

Her humor evaporated as she landed barely a hundred yards from the factory-turned-spawning-tree-returned-to-factory.

She sent a message to Walden.

It was time.

Terry and Rane took up positions on either side of her. This would take her full concentration, and they would defend her.

As to why she hadn’t done this in the middle of the army? Well, it was because if she was opposed, the reprisal would likely erase anyone below Paragon—and maybe them too—in the near area… and Anatalis had requested to be left out of the start of this.

Tala forced her will outward, pushing her authority down until it scraped against that of the Forest Spirit.

She got a mix of impressions from the elk through the forceful contact.

Initial surprise followed by incredulity, then amusement.

He even knew that she had Walden with her. She could feel that he’d been ready to oppose his offspring’s attempt to claim any part of the southern forest, but he didn’t see her as a threat.

She couldn’t claim the forest. She had no standing, no connection, no basis. Even if she’d been a magical creature, she could have done nothing, but as a gated?

The very idea was laughable.

So, he ignored her, seeing her as a distraction, even as she continued to push her sway outward, looking for the Black Legion, as was her right.

Even so, it wasn’t like her enemy would be idle and let her do as she wished.

* * *

Rane felt the shift around them, a rustle through the forest as a pressure fell upon him and Terry.

Terry squawked with irritation rather than alarm, and Rane had to admit that he agreed. This might have flattened him as Refined, but even as a Paragon, he’d have been able to bear it. As a Reforged? It was barely uncomfortable.

They’d been expecting Black Legionnaires to come forth—most likely from the Doman-Imithe—but instead, two of the great trees nearest them withered, transforming from living edifices to piles of mulch in but a moment, each leaving a singular figure behind, each blazing with power and five-hundred-twelve Leshkin spirits.

These were not tainted by Black Legion meddling. These were the princes of the Leshkin, and he remembered Tala telling of them or at least some like them.

“So, we face her once more. It is sooner than predicted, and she is more powerful than before, but it will change nothing.” The voice was like the falling of leaves, the passing of a season.

The response was like the rattle of dried branches against one another. “She attempts to alter our home, and that will not be borne.”

Terry’s eyes widened, and he tried to flicker away, but something stopped him, the barest pressure of a Sovereign denying his escape.

Rane didn’t try to run. Instead, he threw his aura wide, bracing it with his weight and anchoring it atop that of his wife.

A circle two dozen yards wide depressed even as Rane was driven to his knees, but the conceptual blow was caught and held at bay.

All around them plants died and rotted away.

Terry let loose a shriek, his soulbound power flaring, and he was free of the momentary suppression, flickering toward the closer of the two Leshkin princes.

He arrived in the same instant, tearing furrows in the being with void-shrouded claws.

A jet of acid blood fountained forth, but he was already on the other side, adding another wound.

Rane forced himself back to his feet, bone armor growing across his form, the act reinforcing him in ways that simply having it on before the fight wouldn’t have accomplished.

Then, he launched at the second Leshkin, Force slamming into a raised blade with thundering power.

They exchanged a series of blows that blurred, driving the air away and stirring up a wind that whipped the nearby detritus into a maelstrom.

His magnificent wife remained in the center, eyes closed beneath her helmet, hands extended within her gauntlets, looking for all the world like a white-steel statue of a Sovereign of War.

Do what you have to, my love. We’ll keep the distractions at bay.

* * *

Lea grit her teeth as her parents began the battle.

She knew that she needed to stay back, but that didn’t make it any easier.

When two massive trees collapsed in on themselves, she almost charged forward, but the rest of the army kept its steady, inexorable pace.

Then, Terry and her father launched into action, clashing with figures she could only barely see. At times like this, she was very glad that she was taller than her mother.

Even beyond what she could see, she could feel the weight of them, and more than that, they felt more real than they had any right to, as if something were forcing the balance of their existence off of center.

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It was reminiscent of all the Black Legion she’d been fighting of late, but somehow… different. If she had to guess, this was due to a powerful pull of magical power rather than the Black Legions push away from magic.

The imbalance was unmistakable all the same. “There’s a power behind those two that is different from what we’ve faced before.”

Captain Ron was nearby, and he and Talax moved a bit closer to her. The older man had concern in his voice as he asked. “What do you mean?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Ahead of them, Conri glanced back. “Your senses are acute for one of your advancement. They have ‘found’ at least one of the cores of their civilization. They are now bound to it and it to them.” The wolf growled. “The Forest Spirit must be desperate indeed to have pulled that out of hiding.”

Lea blinked in confusion, and Ron filled her in, clearly having understood the god-beast. “Consider it like the magical potential of an entire race of sapient beings. It is all but useless to magical or arcanous creatures, but given back to the very beings it was collected from?”

She gave him a puzzled look, and the man colored.

“Lyn likes to talk about esoteric magical trivia. As she’s advanced, she’s learned more and more, and I like listening to her as she rants.”

Talax chuckled and rolled his eyes. Lea smiled. “That’s sweet.”

Ron cleared his throat, turning forward once more. “Look alive. If this is their opening move, things are going to get quite interesting, sooner rather than later.”

Lea turned her focus back as well.

Her father was circling and falling toward his enemy like a comet coming down to earth. Each strike was filled with power and lethality, but each was blocked or deflected out and away.

Terry was flickering around, seemingly able to keep enough control to use that magic despite the obvious power of his opponent.

Her mother was… well, she was seemingly doing nothing, but something deep within Lea could feel a resonance with whatever was happening.

Existence. Mom is trying to shift existence?

Whatever was happening, Ron was right. Things were about to get interesting.

* * *

Tala had stretched herself as far as she was going to be able.

It was time.

In direct concert with Alat, she seized all the reality threads she held sway over in every direction, and then directed those of Walden’s domain.

Together, she began to weave, entangling the disparate parts of existence, pulling the dimensionality closer together.

As she did this, she exposed the seams of existence, where someone long ago had sewn pieces of a broken world back together.

Flow manifested, but not in her hand. Instead, it was more a matter of working through her aura and authority as it struck, breaking open those seams even as she snatched onto the frayed ends, those which had dangled into the Doman-Imithe for time uncounted.

This had the rather unfortunate side-effect of dumping the army of Black Legion automata onto the superficial in a single moment.

Tala… had not considered the result of effectively tearing open reality across the entire area, but she couldn’t go back now.

It was rather unfortunate that the legion was now scattered throughout her army, but isolate and destroy was a sound tactic, so she hoped it would be fine.

Either way, she had work to do.

* * *

Lea felt lied to. Interesting was a ludicrous understatement, and things were not fine.

There were now Black Legion lessers and sergeants scattered throughout their entire army, and the clash was well and truly underway. It seemed that there were even more powerful officers scattered around, but she had yet to see one.

Through some work of god-beasts, all automata had been diverted away from Anatalis and the Pack, but the arcanous wolves were already acquitting themselves well, lunging, tearing, burning, and freezing as the case may be.

Lea herself was engaging a lieutenant, with her back protected by an odd kaleidoscopic gloom that seemed mostly like an absence in existence where there had—just moments before—been a pocket of emptiness in their lines.

This was quite obviously her mother’s doing, and she hoped that it would be sorted soon enough.

Even she couldn’t see through the absences, and those that stumbled through them suddenly appeared at random locations elsewhere on the battlefield.

She had enough awareness that she’d seen multiple combatants pass through the same location, only to arrive at completely different destinations.

She stored all of her momentum, halting instantly and allowing a sweeping blade to cleave the air before her.

Her inscriptions flared, and her momentum returned, throwing her directly at the legionnaire.

Lea’s sword snicked out once, twice, thrice, and the lieutenant backpedalled even as it brought its weapon through defending arcs, deflecting each attack while Lea advanced.

Barely ten feet away, Talax was engaging two sergeants, his white-steel weapon growing and shrinking to let him attack and defend as needed.

Other Talons clashed with automata around her, but none were free to help her pin down this slippery automaton.

No matter. She would prevail.

* * *

Rane found himself laughing, even as he failed to slay the annoying Leshkin before him.

Its aspect and form were such that he’d decided to name it ‘Rot’ even if he knew that was likely not any name it would claim for itself.

Rane circled in and out, his magics constantly manipulating his direction as he wove Force through attack after attack, only blocking when it led smoothly into another strike.

Initially, the empty air around him had churned, whipping and tearing, a cutting storm with impossible hints of time magic—or more likely something simply close to it—threaded through.

But he was Refined. More than that, he was Reforged. Time would not touch him if he did not wish it so, and no amount of natural decay could harm him. He was the Sculptor of Motion, and no one would alter that which he had sculpted.

That left the clash as one of martial prowess.

He’d always had more talent than his wife in melee combat—a brawler at heart, even if she’d always found her own way to excel—and that held true here as well. Rot was not a blademaster, and while Rane wasn’t one either, he was far more skilled than the Leshkin, and it showed in economy of movement.

Rane chuckled as his magics took him in great arcs around the almost stationary Leshkin. He was actually moving far more than the vegetative creature, but his sword hardly shifted to parry and riposte each incoming strike as he swept past.

He did move Force through great sweeps, sending arcs of destruction through the newly arrived automata that got too close, but that hardly counted for his clash with the Leshkin.

Even the strikes he chose not to block or counter directly simply caused his defensive magics to fire, shifting him slightly. His long years of practice and deep knowledge of his own magics and body turned each of the redirects into an advantageous vector of attack.

As he landed his tenth cut upon the being, Rot screamed, and moisture exploded upward, filling the air with uncountable droplets of water, all under the creature’s power.

It seemed to have noticed Rane’s stone-like nature. As such, Rot forced magic to seek to flay him in the river of power. Moisture with abrasives flowed out and around him as he continued to circle in ever-shifting arcs. The drops clung to his clothing and misting in the air, attempting to turn his constant movement into a disadvantage.

His magic couldn’t move him out of the way of the very air itself, but that was fine. Rane was as the bedrock of the world. It might change shape, it might even seem to vanish from an area, but it was never truly gone. So long as the world existed, there would be bedrock within.

Rane’s armor and skin endured the magic, accepting the light abrasion as a polish, his hold upon himself shifting what should have erased him into a cleansing wash.

He came in again.

Rot turned and struck out, its arm turning into a great cleaver that struck for Rane’s chest.

Rane’s magics triggered, driving his torso back and down even as his legs continued forward.

The blade cut just above his horizontal form, practically skipping off of his chestplate.

Even so, Rane licked out with Force, taking Rot’s forward leg and eliciting another scream.

Inscriptions flared, and all of Rane’s kinetic energy dumped into a holding script, stopping him on a blade of grass barely four feet behind the Leshkin and allowing him to make another strike.

Force bit deeply, taking off an arm even as the separated leg was replaced with bio-mass from below the being.

He was keeping it distracted and on the back foot—sometimes literally—but he wasn’t equipped to end this thing permanently.

That was fine. It had failed with both might and magic against him.

He could endure.

Rot seemed to have come to the same conclusion as it turned on him, using something new. Its eyes poured forth an odd white mist, and Rane felt an impact on his very soul.

The Reforged dropped to the ground, staggering backward.

A growl erupted from his lips, and his soul roared.

No, it seemed that simply enduring would not be sufficient.

His bone armor began to radiate an aura of deep menace, and Rane took the time to crack his neck.

This thing had dared to threaten his soul, and that would not be borne.

Very well.