Skybound - Chapter 26: Of Windshields and Twisted Metal

Morgan Mackenzie was soaring above the clouds. Levels in [Windcutter], along with practice, had improved her efficiency with the ability. Less mana spent for more effect made a difference, allowing her to fly higher and faster the second day. Frantic struggles to stay airborne amidst various hostile creatures had also pushed her closer to breakthroughs with the skill. She could now imbue other elements into her feathers, granting new aspects of attack to it. Fire was the easiest for her, of course, and brutally effective on the more wintery enemies like the [Ice Wights] and [Harpies].

She could also charge her wings with lightning, although the mana cost was an intense drain. Earth made her wings as heavy as stone, which predictably resulted in her dropping like one until she let the effect fade. Water froze almost instantly, and ice was redundant in the current weather and almost as much of a hassle as the earth imbuement had been. The sorceress didn't waste time experimenting too much, anxiety and worry driving her forward to find her friends.

She had crossed over the last mountain range between her and her goal to the sight of clearing skies in the cold afternoon. There were still peaks ahead to the south, but much lower than the high passes and covered with trees instead of stone. Here she found the first evidence of the skyship. Shattered trees and the pockmarks of dirty craters in the sides of the foothills marked a trail down into lower elevations.

Circling around a particularly jagged series of smaller peaks revealed a shallow depression filled with bones and debris, obviously the vacant nest of a large flying predator. To the south, something had carved a long, jagged furrow into the earth, throwing up a wave of debris to either side before terminating in a large crater, filled with the glittering viscera of some massive beast.

Must be the chimaera they killed, thought Morgan. The familiar traces of Althenea's mana lay scattered across the land, threads of gossamer spun from magic that still glowed with the remnants of lethal intent.

More hills and low ridges, glittering with sunlight dancing over snow-covered treetops as she soared above. More wreckage of the ship had been dashed upon the rocks, but she saw no bodies. The beacon with Dana's message stood out to her [Mana Sight] or she would have missed it, camouflaged to look like any other outcropping of stone. She could sense more magic in the distance, and adjusted her course further south towards the lingering death mana she could sense as she drew closer.

Another few minutes, and [Soar] lifted her over one last ridge to see the wreckage of the skyship -- still mostly intact after its disastrous crash. Figures ran about in alarm at her approach, and she could see magic forming as several mages readied spells and others scrambled for cover amidst the makeshift fortifications dug into the mountainside. Her enhanced sight could see several dwarves and beastkin arguing next to one of the remaining cannons, now removed from the ship and secured to stone outcroppings around the crashed vessel. Thankfully a familiar looking Ursaran seemed to manage to calm the dwarves down before any of the cannons were swung in Morgan's direction, although name of the massive beastkin escaped her memory.

"Over the next ridge!" he bellowed, waving as she approached. "They headed for the city, said to meet them there."

With a wave she banked around the wreckage, aiming for a gap in the treeline as she began to ascend once again. She could sense the remnants of potent magic even before she crested the ridge. [Mana Sight] revealed a glittering dome of woven gossamer threads of mana in the distance, but it was the torn valley floor and what rested upon it that drew her attention.

A massive skeleton lay across the field, desiccated meat and other tissues still clinging to the frozen bones. The mana roiling off the bones tasted of wind and storm to her senses, but the rotting remnants of flesh emanated mana that spoke of decay and rot and death to her senses. Lulu wurbled in disgusted outrage as the sorceress winged closer, slowing to take in the rest of the valley. The ground was churned into a massive scar a mile wide and twice as long, as if ancient forms had ripped their way out of the frozen earth. All save a small circle a few paces across, glaringly undisturbed somehow as if protected from the chaos.

Morgan hovered only for a moment, Lulu hopping impulsively down to the bones. The scrubby could not tolerate the amount of filth assaulting both of their senses. The sorceress chuckled, sensing no threats in the immediate area that were capable of harming the plucky poofball. She banked towards the city instead, leaving her friend to its important works as she used fire mana to generate thermals below her wings for extra lift. Hovering, she peered at the barrier with her [Mana Sight].

Millions of tiny hexagonal panels seemed to drift and float like shoals of little fish, dancing in patterns outlined by gossamer threads of mana. Barely visible to normal vision, her magical enhancements revealed intricate detail. She could tell there was even more she couldn't see. The outer layers constantly shifted, her senses catching brief glimpses at a deeper masterwork controlling the barrier that blurred the sight of the city within as if she gazed through stained glass.

Blurred, but only that, and she could see the outlines of buildings and streets lit by rows of mana-powered lanterns on posts. The resemblance to a modern city was eerie, with shadowed blocks of tenement buildings, parks and trees and what looked to be factories in one section. And to her magical sight, thousands of pinpoint sources that could only be mana crystals in active use, moving about like ants with mechanical precision.

Drawing closer didn't let her senses gain much more detail through the tesselating polygons that composed the barrier, but she could tell that a rather large section of the city was in a far more dilapidated state of ruin than the rest. She could see a far greater number of the mana-constructs converging towards the eastern side of the ruined district, and the tell-tale stream of highly charged mana projectiles painting lines like tracers into the onrushing horde.

That has to be Dana, she thought, probing the barrier with tendrils of mana.

The familiar burst of magic from Terisa firing Althenea's pistol form snapped out, slower than Dana's automatic fire but more potent with each individual shot. The two were holding their own, but they couldn't see or sense what Morgan could from her height. Hundreds of the constructs had been funneled down a side street by a building that must have been dropped by Dana, but over a thousand were approaching them from the inner city. The sorceress kept probing the shield, spell after spell either bouncing off or simply being absorbed by the enchantments. She focused her [Mana Sight], hoping to discern some sort of break in the pattern so she might pick at the individual threads of magic. Her attempts felt juvenile compared to the ancient masterpiece as it stymied every effort to unravel its effects. She even tried to land on it, briefly, only to lunge away as a tingling in her hands and feet preceded a sudden draining effect on both her mana and stamina.

[Plasma Glaive] had the most effect out of all her spells, pushing in the polygonal scales of the barrier when she empowered it with [Spell Surge]. It still couldn't get through the barrier. Acting like something halfway between a fluid and a solid, the segments of the shield reinforced each other when one section was attacked. The energy from her spells was diverted and spread out between multiple plates. There was some give, however brief. A tiny delay where the sections seemed to spread apart before the web snapped back into place.

She made her decision when a flare of magic appeared deep in the ruined area, moving quickly towards Dana and Terisa's position. Similar in flavor to the other constructs moving through the city, this new mana signature was far denser, far more intricate, and so bright to [Mana Sight] it cast magical shadows as the power billowed out from its core. Unwilling to let her friends face the danger alone, Morgan darted skyward to gain altitude and distance.

"This is gonna hurt," the Sorceress muttered to herself, drawing deeply on her magic before she could change her mind. Her body sang with power as she pulled a fist sized mana crystal from her storage and drained it completely, the runes on her skin flashing with violet and azure traces of lightning. The crystal fell to dust as [Windcutter] activated, and she dove for the barrier.

Just before she hit, Morgan activated [Spell Surge] despite her instincts flooding her mind with warnings about using it with her flight skill.

Her world disappeared in a flash of light and a roar of sound.

==========================

The Horse Knight rushed to save the new creatures that so resembled the master. The metal skin worn by the smaller one still emitted the same type of signal it had sensed many days before. Its strange weapons spat bright sparks of intensely focused mana, and at velocities the golem's senses could barely track. Individually, the damage they dealt to stone or steel was impressive enough as the tiny bolts pierced the weak armor of the attacking golems. With the constant cracking roar of the strange spinning weapon, they shredded the unarmored maintenance drones as they swarmed towards the pair.

The tall one was not idle either, nor the shifted soul the Horse Knight sensed in that one's hands. More focused bolts of mana flew from that one, seeking unerringly the weak points in the frames of the medium construction units to leave them crippled and immobile. The few heavy construction units might have been a problem, but the soul in the hands of the tall one simply shifted forms and roared burning death made from spinning metal that simply punched through the large golems as if their shells were made of paper. What came out the other side of the tall one's targets tended to destroy large swaths of the small and medium drones. If maintenance and construction drones were all that they had to deal with, the two could probably hold their own.

It wasn't all they had to deal with.

So far only maintenance and construction models had converged on the pair. By far the most numerous of the constructs in the city, they were slow, unarmed, and for the most part unarmored aside from basic panels and plates to protect moving parts from weather and erosion. However, the sound and magic disturbing the normally silent streets had caused the true guardians to abandon their normal slumber.

The guardian units were not built for construction.

The Horse Knight raced through the alleyways, activating its combat augments as it leapt a drainage aqueduct. The clippity-clop of his hooves changed to thundering slams of heated steel on frozen, snow-covered paving stones. His weight increased as armor plates folded out of enchanted storage inscriptions that activated in sequence, interlocking to encase his rushing form. The power output of his energy core doubled, then tripled, as the inscriptions between the multi-layered armor panels activated with an angry surge of red and orange lightning that sparked and sputtered around his body in the cold winter air.

The Horse Knight could sense the combat forms growing closer to the two organic creatures fighting the maintenance units. Keeping track of so many moving targets across such a wide region as the silent city was putting a strain on his Adaptive Determination Matrix, even tapped into the weakened signal network that encompassed the city and connected all of the servitor units. Overwhelmed with a combination of data inputs while running predictive analysis, the knightly golem missed the cause at first when every autonomous unit in the city froze in place.

His determination matrix stuttered for a unit of time so short as to not be measurable by mortal perceptions without advanced magical equipment. The reason became unmistakable clear as a powerful surge of pure, unadulterated, intensely concentrated mana spread across the barrier over the city. The magic flared into the visible spectrum, a harsh violet spark of light that grew into a miniature sun to the north of the city's walls. The Horse Knight's senses were briefly blinded, the raw energy emitting enough pressure that the enchanted dome protecting the city shuddered with the thrumming of power.

The nexus of mana pulsed like a slow heartbeat. Once. Then again, stronger than the first time. A third time, and the mana seemed to draw into itself before striking the barrier.

The world became light, and then the barrier shattered.

=================

Terisa Aras slid through a gap between two piles of rubble and shattered golem parts, her new skill [Rapid Reload] letting her slip another round into the chamber and slide Althenea's bolt closed with preternatural speed. The first pair of maintenance drones that had appeared when the footbridge collapsed had been easy enough for her and Dana to deal with, but that noise had brought five more to their position. Five became dozens, and when dozens became hundreds the huntress witnessed Dana's newly equipped weapon speak like thunder before the engineer tossed several munitions through the ground-floor windows of a stone tower standing over the intersection of the cobbled street. Terisa's higher stats had barely allowed her to keep up as the other woman raced around the corner, shifting to fire into the coming horde as she turned.

Dana shouted "Fire in the hole!" and Terisa covered her ears, a massive double-WHUMP preceding the tower's collapse into and across the street. This gained them a reprieve from the smaller ones, but two of the larger construction golems lumbered around the estate to their rear. Althenea's rifle form served to punch through the center of one of the golems, destroying the core, while Dana's minigun rounds merely bounced off the thicker steel skin of the constructs. With some inventive swearing, the engineer let the spinning barrels slow as her shoulder mounted weapon slid into position with a quiet whirr and a click. The second golem fell immediately after.

"We've got bigger ones coming," panted Dana as the two women ran, putting distance between themselves and the fallen building. It would not slow the drones for very long. "Something dropped one of my dragonfly bots, and it has to be on its way."

"The combat models must have been dormant when not needed," replied Terisa, once again reloading Althenea's rifle form. "At least they're all heading this way and not towards the others. Once Biggles wakes up they'll be along for some support."

Dana stopped suddenly, seeming to stare to the southeast where the ruined district still sat undisturbed. "The original signal is getting stronger, and it's moving," she said as her helmet chimed with soft artificial tones. "I'm also picking up shitloads of movement and readings for mana and metal coming out way from the  north and the west."

"You think your mysterious signal is friendly?"

"Not gonna count on it, but I won't shoot first. We'll have to see-CONTACT!" she shouted, her smaller sidearm weapon snapping out in a metal-clad hand to fire off several snapping rounds. Terisa turned as well, sending empowered [Mana Shot] bursts at the pack of crawling automatons that rushed around the corner.

The two women sprinted between the nearest two buildings, Dana abandoning her armor's bipedal form in favor of six blurring legs of steel. "Poppin' smoke!" she declared, dropping a hissing cylinder as she followed the huntress into the alley.

The path came to a dead end, but Terisa didn't even slow as she jumped for the second story window. She burned stamina to launch herself high enough to catch the stone ledge above the opening, stepping into the room inside almost as if it were a door. Likewise, Dana didn't slow, simply skittering up the wall with a spider's silent grace.

As they paused to catch their breath, Terisa felt the ambient mana shift, almost like a convulsion. The golems had rushed into the alleyway, but the smoke had broken their sensory capabilities temporarily. Barely breathing, she watched more of the machines pour into the space between the buildings outside as the mana over the city seemed to have a seizure. As far as she could tell, Dana seemed oblivious to the magical emanations. Her suit made up the difference though, and she could see more lights flashing inside the woman's helmet, reflecting glaring reds and oranges through the clear crystalline faceplate.

Thunderous impacts echoed outside as something massive approached, and both women could hear the sounds of tearing metal and the telltale screech of tortured steel dragging on stone. The golems in the alleyway turned towards the noise, rushing after this new stimulus, before every golem in sight simply froze.

Even Dana could feel the surging pulse of mana that blanketed the city right then. And the one that followed after, even stronger. Again, and raw mana occluded all of Terisa's senses for one terrible moment. She recovered in a fraction of a second, thanks to the innate advantage of her high levels, her vision clearing just in time to see the dome over the city become coated in solid light.

The sky became fire, as the barrier failed, and the snow and gravel and loose stones bounced upwards in the span of half a breath before the ice began to melt. The city shook with the aftershocks of the pressure wave, warming up several degrees.

The barrier failed, fractalized chunks of condensed, shimmering mana falling like shards of a broken mirror that evaporated before they hit the ground.

As the last remnants of the barrier faded to nothing, a burning tangle of feathers and flesh slammed through the building right next to their hidden shelter.

Smoldering feathers fell like ashen snow.