Rune Seeker

“Yan?” Seena asked from the ground, her eyes locked on the spearman beside her.

“Hey, boss,” Yanily said. “Sorry I’m late.”

“How…?”

“Maybe let’s talk about it later?” Yanily asked, lightning arcing up the Spear of Clouds and blasting Fitch back. “I’ll be taking this, if you don’t mind.” With that, Yanily stood and spun the spear in his hands, thunder rumbling behind it as the blade got up to speed.

“So, you were hiding somewhere,” Fitch said, pushing himself to his feet. His right hand was blackened and charred where he’d been holding the spear, but like all the other injuries, he simply ignored it.

“You could say that,” Yanily said, smirking. “And, you know, you’ve kind of been a bad boy. I mean, you’ve always been a jerk, but this isn’t you, Fitch. Last chance to stop.”

“Or, what, you’re going to stop me where your whole party failed?”

The spear kept spinning almost lazily in Yanily’s hands as he stepped protectively in front of Seena. “If I have to.”

“You’re not strong enough.”

“You sure about that?” Yanily said, the spinning spear suddenly stopping only for him to slam the butt of it into the ground at his feet.

At the same time spear met stone, thunder rolled across the sky and lightning like nothing before flashed within the clouds. And there, within that lightning, a shape moved. Massive wings spread from a powerful body. Four muscular legs seemed to take a step, and a long, thick tail lashed behind. Finally, a serpentine neck extended, and terrifying jaws spread to let loose another roar of rolling thunder.

A dragon. No, not a dragon. The Primal storm dragon. Released.

Wingtip to wingtip, it had to be miles wide, and its head turned as if it sensed an intruder. Another deafening roar, and then it leapt to intercept tentacles snaking through the clouds.

“I found a friend,” Yanily said. “Or maybe a sponsor, I guess?” Wings of storm clouds and charged lightning burst from Yanily’s back, flexing as if they’d been restrained for far too long.

A quick check showed Yanily back in Hiral’s Party Interface, and he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face.

“Good to have you back,” Hiral said over the party chat.

“Good to be back,” Yanily said. “Now, let’s take care of this. As much as I like having the spear in my hands, it needs to go back to the Grandfather.”

“No, I’ll be taking it back,” Fitch interrupted.

“Not likely,” Hiral said, stepping up beside Yanily. The Emperor’s Greatsword glowed fiercely in his hands, and a small thread of solar energy pulled the rest of his weapons to float in a semicircle behind him.

“You brought this on yourself,” Seeyela added, stepping up on Hiral’s left. Blood still streamed down the gash through the front of her helmet, and her daggers were embedded in Fitch’s shoulders, but she wasn’t backing down.

“What she said,” Seena said. Her flaming sheath had reformed around her, and she held the now familiar fireballs in the palms of her hands. Li’l Ur floated on her shoulder, his little face furious, and blue runes circled from his hands to stream into Seena’s armor.

Right stepped in front of everybody, purple flames running along his Meridian Lines. Solar energy leaked from his two injuries, but with his increased power thanks to Terminal, they didn’t seem to be slowing the new tank down much. Even as Hiral watched, a stream of water from behind rose above the party and mixed with the rain. The next drops that fell on Hiral contained a powerful restorative, healing his wounds and washing away his fatigue.

Left had used his Waters of Frey tattoo, basically turning him into a group-wide healer by mixing the power with the rain. Smart.

Right’s injuries sealed before Hiral’s eyes, and Seeyela’s hand went to her face even as her health bar shot up in the Party Interface.

Hiral looked at his friends around him—eyes lingering on the suddenly returned Yanily—and let himself feel a moment of hope for the future. Hope for winning here, and for someday seeing Nivian and Wule again. If Yanily could come back, anything was possible.

His attention turned back to the Infested. Anything was possible after they dealt with the problem in front of them.

The two sides maintained the standoff, each eying the other, then erupted into motion at the same time.

Right shot straight ahead to intercept Fitch doing the same, their unarmed blows meeting and blasting out a shockwave of impact. Hiral and Yanily each rushed out to the sides and then cut in to pincer the Infested between them. Somehow, with his wings of lightning speeding him along, Yanily was almost as fast as Hiral, and the two slammed in like a high-speed vise.

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The two S-Rank weapons smashed against the green-veined tentacles stretching out from Fitch’s back to block them, eliciting their own shockwaves. Even parried, though, the pressure from the twin attacks blasted through to compress Fitch between them. Bamf, and Seeyela appeared a second later, her feet landing against the small of Fitch’s back while her hands closed around her Fangs.

Green energy flared as soon as she touched her weapons. Then she kicked off, ripping bloody daggers out of the man in a gory spray that tore the wounds further open.

A pair of howls cut through the din of battle, the first giving Hiral the Furious Howl buff and the second making Fitch shake his head. A debuff, that one, and it seemed to stack with the oppressive Banner of Despair they all still stood within. Black lines, almost like crawling worms, seemed to wiggle across Fitch’s body, slightly slowing his movements. And, if what Hiral had been told about the debuff was true, it’d be playing havoc with his mental state, constantly bombarding him with hopelessness and the urge to simply give up.

Not that the Infested appeared inclined to do that, his fist and tentacles constantly lashing out at the party all around him. Even with the debuffs, the Ghost-Web Venom clearly coursing through his veins, and the party hammering him from all sides, he was holding them off.

Hiral’s sword continued to flash back and forth as he battled against the tentacles in front of him. The previously robust and almost fleshy apparitions of solar energy condensed as they fought, sharpening their edges and growing denser. With the change came a new speed and sharpness, the limbs going from battering clubs to whipping swords.

It was still a stalemate. Was it time for Eloquently Enraged? No, that’s not what the Chord is saying.

Instead of using his strongest buff, Hiral followed the music around Fitch, moving to join where Seeyela battled from. As if on cue, a second banner released a glowing golden dome of light. This time, the Banner of Courage reinforced the party, giving them the extra push they needed, and a portal appeared where Hiral had been a second before.

Seena charged out, the fireballs in her hands replaced with narrow, two-foot-long tornados of flame in each hand. Like the fireballs before, these fiery batons tore at anything they hit—including the solar tentacles that tried to intercept them.

Opposite her, Yanily’s spear glowed with Separation and sparked with lightning, and he lashed out with his familiar Reed Spear Style. Sentient tentacles or not, Fitch wasn’t prepared for the ferocity of the barrage, thrust after thrust slipping past to punch holes in his left arm, leg, and chest.

The Infested tried to react by whipping around a powerful hook, but Right wasn’t having any of that. Coming in with a titanic swing of his own, Right caught Fitch’s fist, the purple flames rushing up Fitch’s arm at the impact.

THOOOM! The thunder overhead pounded in time with the Chord of the Primal Echo, and Hiral followed its guidance, activating his Domain ability. To his own eyes, a bubble expanded a hundred feet in every direction, and the falling rain became a sixth sense to him. Immediately, the rest of the party moved just a touch faster and hit a tiny bit harder as they received bonuses from his buff as well.

Most importantly, though, the Chord finally reached Hiral’s ears clearly. He could see, hear, and feel everything. Shifting the Emperor’s Greatsword to a one-handed grip, he drew his RHC in his other hand. Whap, whap—he smacked aside two tentacles and then stepped to his left, Seeyela seamlessly flowing in where he’d just been to cut her Fangs across the backs of Fitch’s legs.

Hiral stepped aside again and pulled the trigger of his RHC, the bolt smacking into the back of Fitch’s head and jerking it forward. In that split section of distraction, Right weaved around the Infested’s fist like a boxer. A brutal combo of jabs and hooks snapped at least three ribs and nearly took Fitch’s jaw off, but Hiral took his next step to join Yanily.

Back to work parrying aside tentacles, Hiral’s greatsword was a glowing blur. Despite being longer than he was tall and more than a foot and a half wide, he swung the weapon just as quickly as Fitch had his smaller sabre. Connection, Gravity, and the senses from his Domain allowed Hiral to put the blade exactly where he needed it. Still, having recognized Yanily as a threat, four tentacles had been dedicated to keeping the spearman from running rampant.

Parry, parry, step, pull. Hiral beat aside two tentacles, dodged the third for a Lost Echoto explode, and slammed a bolt of Impact into Fitch’s good knee. While the hit didn’t have the same impact as Right’s earlier punch, it made the man’s leg slide inward, changing his balance. With the angle of the tentacles’ attack altered, Hiral batted them away, then rolled to the side while releasing his RHC.

Yanily filled the space a heartbeat later, thrusting up with his spear to vanish in a bolt of lightning. Fitch’s skin sizzled in a blackened line up the side of his body as Yanily passed. At the same time, Hiral found his feet in front of Fitch and spun, the Emperor’s Greatsword tracing a corkscrew in the air as it followed his motion.

Leaping into the air, Right kicked aside Fitch’s incoming fist while simultaneously leaping out of the way of the incoming sword. KAAA-THOOOOM sounded above, thunder rippling outward as Yanily hit the clouds and bounced back down.

Seena jumped back from a pair of snapping tentacles and thrust her hands out. Twisting furiously, the flaming batons became encircled by blue runes, then shot from her hands like the drilling lances she’d used before.

With flaming spikes to his legs, the Emperor’s Greatsword through his waist, and Skyfall to his chest, Fitch took all three attacks simultaneously.

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