[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 65: Hellspawn

Eventually, Sam had to cut their training sessions completely when it became obvious that they were closing in on Raiko’s Skyshard.

Nearly every hour, Matt had to supply Raiko with extra mana just to keep her conscious, much less coherent.

Sam was worried about her, but there was nothing he could do but wait. And that was the worst part of all, waiting for the arrival of their tiny Skyshard to Raiko’s infested and embattled one.

Over a meal of roasted [Marrowgems], Kai looked thoughtfully into the flames. “I have never thought of you as a man who follows through,” he admitted. “You coast from one thing to the next, never taking anything too seriously. Why?”

Sam looked up. Just out of the firelight, Komachi was intensely licking one of the mandragoras, or “mandys” as she liked to call them.

“You mean why is this different than on Earth?” Sam chuckled. “How would you feel if everything you did always met with failure? I could hardly afford food for myself, let alone for me and Komachi. I worked for a retail giant that couldn’t be bothered to give me a living wage. I mean, my home was this amazing island, and yet I could hardly enjoy it. Of course, I shirked responsibility at every turn just to claw back some semblance of sanity.”

“You could have—”

Sam raised his hand sharply. “I’m going to stop you right there,” he hissed, trying to keep a lid on his temper, “before you say something that sets me off without meaning to. I spent all of my time trying to get out of poverty. It’s easy to say ‘go to school’ or ‘get a different job’ but until you’re stuck in that trap, you’ll never understand.”

Kai paused a moment. He wasn’t dumb, but he was stubborn, and Sam had no idea where he was going to go with this conversation. “That was not what I was going to say. You could have come to me for help.”

The burst of laughter that erupted from Sam let off some of that pent-up anger that festered like a wound. “When would I have ever thought you would help me? You’ve done nothing but disapprove of me ever since we met. Nowhere in all of our interactions could I have fathomed that you would help me, even if I begged.”

Kai looked down at his hands. “I would not have asked that of you.”

“How was I to know?”

“I did not hate you, Sam.”

“Sure fooled me.”

Kai opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. This happened several times. “I am sorry,” was all he managed to get out.

Those three words hit Sam like a truck. It wasn’t that he apologized. Which was enough of a shock by itself. It was the immense sincerity.

Sam cleared his throat. “It’s fine, Kai. Done and buried, yeah?”

Kai looked as if he wanted to argue, but decided that now wasn’t the best time to be excessively stubborn.

Thank the gods for small miracles, Sam thought.

Komachi wandered over to take her customary bite of Sam’s food. Something he made sure to leave for her. He had no idea if this was good for her, but she seemed to like it.

And technically speaking, she was something more than a normal cat.

He hoped that she knew best when it came to her own body.

The rest of the night passed in relative peace. Matt, exhausted and drained, dragged himself to his lean-to and promptly passed out.

Raiko drifted listlessly over to the fire and shared what warmth a ghost could from the Archflame’s heat.

Nobody said a word. That was the odd thing that Sam would remember years later. The silence hung in the air like a pall, but even Komachi simply curled up in his lap and went to sleep.

Out in the darkness, the mandys were doing whatever it was they did. They would not take part in the coming battle. Sam had made sure of it.

He wasn’t even sure how they were going to get onto Raiko’s Skyshard. If they were close enough to jump off Sil’mara, then whatever was on Raiko’s Skyshard would be able to get onto his.

If at all possible, he wanted to avoid spreading whatever troubles her Skyshard had to Sil’mara.

Deep in thought, all but Matt spent the quiet hours of the night staring at the flames and resting.

Some might have called it the calm before the storm, but Sam felt wound tighter than piano wire. He much would have preferred to just teleport there and get the fighting over with immediately.

The waiting strained his nerves.

And then, out of the velvety darkness, Sam saw it thanks to his helm’s Dark Vision.

A moment later, Raiko lifted her head. “We’re here.”

Wind swept across Sam’s island, carrying a mixture of golden leaves, and ember filled smoke.

A series of small Isles crowned Raiko’s Skyshard, packed with howling and chanting demonic monsters. Warriors and shamans alike, armed with a host of cruel weaponry. Katanas, axes, staves, and various weapons were adorned with bones and strange voodoo-like implements.

Marbled stone and scarlet grass marked these chunks of land as being distinctly out of place. Even the air around these floating Isles was warped and distorted, a ragged, fraying glimpse into a hellish dimension.

Sheltered by bamboo thickets and rolling hills was a lone giant tree, towering above a spring, its golden leaves shimmering with mana. Glowing spirits armed with bows, shields, and katanas held the line, protecting the tree.

Sam was struck by just how much larger her Skyshard was than his. If Sil’mara was about the size of an average house, then Raiko’s Skyshard was practically a city block.

Though, even with his Dark Vision, it was hard to gauge the exact size. There was no mistaking the sensation of openness and space, however.

Monsters climbed down giant chains anchored into Raiko’s Skyshard, hooked into obsidian-like growths that spread black and red sickness into the surrounding land.

The monsters surged across the edges of the Skyshard, hacking away at the terrain with vicious abandon.

Now that Sam knew what to look for, he could see evidence of the destruction of Raiko’s Skyshard all along the ragged edges. Whatever size it currently was, however big, it had been bigger once.

A tower-like structure, just barely clinging on, was in the middle of the fiercest fighting and was taking heavy damage as Sam’s group arrived. Already, it was breaking in two.

At the ruined tower’s base, several soldiers desperately tried to defend it, but they were outnumbered against an army of bloodthirsty demons.

Looking closer, Sam saw that they weren’t actually human soldiers, but headless suits of armor wielding great weapons that made his own oversized greatsword look like a toothpick. Their wide sweeping strikes took out multiple demons at a time, but they were slow.

“Dullahan?” Raiko whispered in awe.

When the demons died, their skin crackled with darkness, their forms burst into shadows.

That’s odd. Monsters don’t normally disappear like that.

As Sil’mara drew closer, it took another demon slain by the living armor to notice something more. After the demon collapsed into shadows, a dark bolt of energy arced to one of the shaman’s safe on one of those orbiting Isles.

Dancing and chanting, the thing didn’t bother to conceal its fell magic. That energy swirled around its bony staff and then pooled upon their staging point, slowly reforming into yet another demon.

“Summons?” Sam wondered aloud.

The living suits of armor couldn’t do anything about that. They were in the thick of combat.

But Sam could.

The spirits couldn’t seem to leave their defensive line, either. The Tree struck Sam as vitally important, the heart of the Skyshard.

Perhaps just like the [Sourcestone].

Though he didn’t have long to study the battlefield, he felt an uncanny instinctual sense as to how evenly matched the forces were. Neither could quite uproot the other.

But over time, Raiko’s side was losing bit by bit.

Attrition would do them in, and the demons were never-ending. Those dullahan wouldn’t last much longer, and then the spirits would be all the more pressed by the rampaging oni.

Sam thought he had stared at the battle for hours, seeing the tide flow this way and that, gauging weaknesses and strengths, but in truth, it had been a few heartbeats for him to get a decent read on the war below.

He yearned to be down there, to feel the pulse of the battle itself. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he’d have a much better understanding of the battle then.

The quest that popped up, perhaps meant to guide him, told Sam nothing new aside from the origin of the conflict.

And that was immaterial to the conflict itself.

New Conflict Quest: Hellspawn

Monster Waves: 4/5

Embroiled in a blood feud against Islegardians that has spanned Ages and further empowered by a god seeking to maneuver against you and your Incarnate companion, hellsent oni are assaulting this Sacred Tree’s last bastion and its guardian Sage when they are at their most vulnerable.

However, these monsters are not of this world. Slay the Shamans summoning their brethren to battle and destroy what tethers these invaders to this dimension to claim victory.

Objectives:

Defeat the remaining waves of hellsent without either the Sacred Tree falling to the oni’s flames or Sage Raiko being slaughtered/captured.

Destroy all dimensional anchorstones.

Slay all boss monsters.

Immense Job, Path and Skyshard Experience are awarded upon victory, collected from all monster waves.

Conflict Modifiers:

+4 Monster Level (God’s bane)

Dimensional Tears

Ambient Chaos

At the heart of it all, a lone warrior unleashed relentless destruction through the ranks of oni. A single blade turned into a whirlwind of slicing waves of ever-changing mana rifts.

Burning fire rolled over the oni that scorched their bodies to shadowy cinders. More monsters charged forward, meeting a rolling blender of blue ice spikes.

Those fell, and the next were crushed by the unstoppable concussive force of violet thunder.

Chaos flashed, morphing the mana. Changing its element.

Altering and augmenting how the Hollow Sage demolished her enemies.

Armored like a samurai from head to toe, the Islegardian emerged from the elements that marred the landscape with a tapestry of mottled colors.

A corona of Chaos mana burned, crackled, and shimmered from Raiko’s body. Dashing through the air, ripples of mana followed her rapid footfalls.

Quicker than thought, the Hollow Chaos Sage drew her mana charged sword. Golden lightning crashed into a particular oni, larger and stronger than all the rest.

Sam couldn’t discern where the magic exactly originated. It was as if the blade instantaneously transformed into a font of lightning.

That must be one of the boss monsters. Though not a shaman.

And it was keeping the Hollow Chaos Sage in check, along with the endless units of oni. It didn’t matter how spectacularly she obliterated them.

The shamans summoned them right back.

The mandragoras and Matt were woken up and given their tasks. The mandys were meant to lie in wait as a first line of defense if necessary, stunning anything that tried to get onto Sam’s Skyshard.

Matt, meanwhile, would stay far enough back to be out of immediate danger, but close enough Sam hoped to be able to gain some EXP while in their party.

He needed it.

“I could come with you,” he argued. “Or at least lob some spells at them.”

“I don’t want them to get it in their head to investigate this Skyshard,” Sam said, checking the straps of his armor. “By the time they realize somebody is dropping on them, they’ll already be dead. You’re in the party, that’s about as much as we can do. It’s still dark, so that gives us an element of surprise. If we’re quick, maybe we can clear out a foothold and then you can come forward.”

Sam halted the island a good twenty feet above the furthest Isle. It was a stroke of luck that their smaller Skyshard seemed to ride on a current of mana above Raiko’s. Sam wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass him by.

He racked his brain for a plan, watching the chaos unfold below. Just how long had this all been going on? It looked like a war zone. How were just a handful of people supposed to stop that?

A shimmering wave of protective magic rained over each of them as Komachi cast her magic.

It was time to go.

Sam tossed the [Makeshift Rope] to Matt. “If you see one of us in trouble, toss this down.”

Matt nodded and looped one end around the nearest boulder.

Pulling Komachi into his armor, Sam stepped off the edge of his Skyshard and dropped into a maelstrom of blood and death.