Spiteful Healer

Chapter 176: Master the Shadows

Lina took the lead, using her shadow step spell to find suitable shadows cast by the buildings of the Royal Ring. Initiailly, she moved slowly in fear that Viella wouldn’t be able to keep up though.

“Come on, go faster.” Viella urged her after a few jumps, prompting Lina to speed up. As she shrank the intervals in between her jumps, she was repeatedly glancing back to make sure Viella was still able to follow, and to her surprise, she was. This continued until Lina was jumping at her maximum speed and still, Viella was able to easily keep up with her.

“Can’t you go faster? They won’t last long against those immune seekers.” Viella urged Lina, and at this point Lina let out a frustrated sigh - the answer was no, she couldn’t go any faster. But the pair made it down off of the Royal Ring in a short amount of time and then began to work their way down the ramps to the lower branches.

There were small sections along the ramps where Lina couldn’t even locate shadows to jump to and was forced to run.

“You ought to plan your paths through a city more carefully. Don’t ever get caught without shadows.” Viella scolded her as the two ran side by side.

“Why do I feel like you’re trying to teach me? Aren’t we in the middle of a mission?”

“You should be prepared to learn at all times, always.” Viella snapped back. “If you wish you master the shadows, that is.”

“Right.” Lina grumbled back. Once they reached the lower branches, the abundance of shadows around them increased significantly, making it easy to jump around thanks to the many nearby buildings and NPCs.

The NPCs however were all fleeing in terror, looking down off the sides of the branches at the commotion occurring on the lowest level of the city. Lina couldn’t help but look as well and saw an army of white tree guards engaged in a battle with an extremely large serpent covered in dark brown scales, whipping its long tail around and destroying the stacks of buildings on the ground floor of the city.

The citizens seemed to have all already been evacuated up on to the lowest branches, and it was only the White Tree guards on the ground level fighting it. Coupled with this, there were plenty of longbow wielding guards shooting down at the serpent from above on the branches. They seemed to be handling the serpent, but in Lina’s eyes the battle could still go either way.

As she looked beyond the commotion, she saw where the wall had been breached. A giant gaping hole in the city's outer wall with a pile of crumbling rubble at its base could be seen far off in the distance, with multiple dark elf druids and wizards working to mend it and seal it back up while simultaneously holding back and preventing a second serpent from entering the city.

“They will not fall so easily. We have our own task to complete. Focus.” Viella said to Lina after she’d caught her stopping to stare.

“Right.” Lina nodded back as she turned her attention towards the surrounding buildings once more, in particular the ones built into the side of the tree. She was sure that the Pale Watch Tavern should’ve been visible in the trunk nearby, but instead it was just a plain flat section of tree.

“It should be right there.” Lina pointed at the blank section of the tree’s trunk that sat at the base of the branch they stood on.

“Illusions can trick your eyes, but the shadows will always tell you the truth.” Viella replied before shadowstepping towards the point Lina had motioned at. Lina followed, and sure enough despite not being able to see the tavern’s hidden entrance, Lina could feel the shadows of the interior on the other side of the illusion.

“They’ll probably be guarding it. Follow me once inside.” Lina said as the pair stopped in front of the hidden tavern entrance, and Viella nodded back at her. Following this, Lina shadow stepped beyond the illusion and ended up inside, on the tavern floor of the Pale Watch tavern.

It was devoid of any NPCs, not patrons or the bartender or barmaids were present. This made it easy for Lina and Viella to shadowstep up to the second floor and down the hidden spiral staircase, but once they had appeared inside the second hidden tavern floor, the lack of patrons was no more.

Several heavily armed and armored seekers were waiting for them. Lina knew it wasn’t necessary to fight them all, given that they were severely outnumbered 10 to 2, in addition to them not being able to take any damage. Instead, Lina focused in on the chamber beyond, where Kagil’aktos office was and the rune they needed to destroy sat on the roof. But as she focused on it, she felt her control over the shadows being blocked.

“They’ve put an anti-magic rune on the door. We will need to get through it the old fashioned way.” Viella said as she pointed over the shoulders of the angry seekers at the door behind the bar and spotted the dimly glowing gray rune carved into it's wood.

“Or, just destroy the rune.” Lina replied before shadow stepping around the seekers to arrive in front of the door, then slashed her daggers downwards at the rune carved into it. Before her daggers could impact it though, a longsword shot up from the ground out of nowhere between her and the door and parried her strikes away. A second later, an axe came swinging down at her from the side, forcing her to shadowstep back out of its path to where Viella was standing in the entry of the lower tavern.

From this vantage point she carefully looked over the patrons to see who it was that had stopped her, and spotted an elite battlemaster seeker mixed in with the other non-elites, grinning with bright white teeth under his dark tattered gray hood.

“Light your flames, they cannot move in the light.” The elite seeker shouted, and following this the other patrons began pulling lit torches from their inventories, brightly illuminating the tavern and severely limiting the locations in which Lina and Viella could shadow step to. Simultaneously, the elite moved himself directly in front of the anti-magic door and hovered his multiple weapons around himself, preparing for Viella and Lina’s next moves.

“We’ll need a bit more finesse, it seems.” Viella sighed as she pulled her own daggers out.

Aegis, Krael, and Kur’aktos fought the 6 seekers back out of the dining room. The enemies were not able to take damage which made them impossible to vanquish, but they were non-elite and had very predictable attack patterns. Once Aegis and the elite NPCs with him got the hang of it, it became incredibly easy to handle their attacks.

Once they’d managed to push them back into the main hall of the palace, they had a lot more room to maneuver. Aegis had plenty of experience fighting enemies without attacking them, so it was easy for him to conserve his energy and focus solely on blocking and healing. Krael and Kur’aktos, on the other hand, could not resist their urges to repeatedly slash out at the enemies despite it being pointless.

“Don’t waste your stamina on attacks. Just parry and dodge. Conserve your energy until the time that the protection is worn off, we’ll need it then.” Aegis commanded them as he threw out more healing winds. “The less damage you take right now the better, I need to recover some of my mana.”

“Right, my apologies.” Kur’aktos nodded as he stepped back and avoided a swing, then held back his own arm despite the obvious temptation he had to swing his mithral blade down on the enemy in front of him.

“And you trust your companion to break the protection spell?” Krael asked him worriedly.

“I trust all of my companions to do exactly what they need to do.” Aegis replied.

“That’s 25 now. C’mon. Haven’t you guys…” Pyri desperately waved her arms around, wiggling her fingers frantically. The seekers crowded the platform at the base of the ramp to the inner sanctum. Spears, longswords, shortswords, battleaxes, arrows - all constantly flying at her from all directions. “Ever heard of a fair fight?” She strained her words, spinning in circles and mixing in incredible footwork to assist her cinderbolts as they danced around her in repeated spiral motions.

Despite her incredible spell control, there were too many attacks and her mental state was being heavily strained and exhausted. Not only that, but the number of seekers attacking her kept going up as the last few White Tree guards died, and their killers joined in on attacking Pyri.

She mixed in ducking and sidestepping into her avoidance measures, but her stamina was beginning to rapidly drain alongside her mana, it wasn’t going to last much longer.

“You will not interrupt me again, insect. Dissolve in the absolute nothingness of the void.” Mayiera shouted down at Darkshot angrily. She currently held a blackhole spell above her head with her right hand, and was maintaining a void beam with her left hand that she was aiming at Darkshot, following behind him as it crashed into the trunk of the tree behind him and left behind a scorched shimmering trail of where it had impacted.

“Pinning shot.” Darkshot shouted desperately out as he strafed along a branch, just narrowly keeping ahead of the beam. The arrow he’d fired up at Mayiera didn’t reach her, though, as it was pulled into the blackhole spell. With this combination of spells, he wasn’t able to interrupt her beam any longer, and Mayiera began hovering closer and closer to Darkshot to absorb his arrows with her black hole spell more easily.

“Grappling shot!” Darkshot fired an arrow out to swing forward off of the branch he stood on to another, to get further from the beam as it closed in on him. It worked, he landed on the next branch over, but both Mayiera and the beam continued to close in on him.

“Grappling shot!” He cast again, aiming to continue his tarzan-swinning to create more distance. This time, however, Mayiera was too close to the shot and her black hole sucked in the arrow, removing the possibility that he could swing forward onto it. He was now left with the choice of being hit by the beam, or jumping down further off of the tree.

That was, until he felt the light tapping of talons on his shoulder. He glanced to his side and saw that Darkwing had found his way to him from flying with Snowflake, and let out a soft cooing sound.

Seeing this, Darkshot held his ground and let the void beam crash into him, while simultaneously Darkwing activated the Fae spell and blocked the damage from the beam. Using the small window where the channeled spell was blocked, Darkshot dashed through the beam to get to the other side of it where he’d be further from Mayiera, and shot another grappling shot at a faraway branch.

This time, he’d had enough distance from the blackhole spell that the grappling shot went out without issue, and he was able to swing safely away from her and create more distance.

“What is the meaning of this? How does one so pitiful like yourself take on the power of my lord and be unaffected?” Mayiera shouted out in anger as she watched it happen, a look of confusing falling on her face.

“What can I say? I’m just a special kinda guy.” Darkshot smirked back.

“Your pigeon.” Mayiera gritted her teeth as she eyed the bird on his shoulder.

“Damn, she figured that out quick.” Darkshot grumbled.

“I’ll pluck its feathers and roast it for dinner. You cannot escape me forever, insect.” Mayiera roared at Darkshot. This caused Darkshot to glance up at his own interface and see his stamina and mana bar, and knew she was right. Despite this, though, he took a deep breath and prepared for his next move.

“Kiting spellcasters is usually pretty hard. Luckily, you’re kind of an idiot.” Darkshot taunted her.

Kagil’aktos rushed at Rakkan and began swinging his longsword down on him rapidly from all directions. Despite only having one weapon to match Rakkan’s six weapons in the hands of his three echoes, Kagil’aktos’ blade swings were ridiculously fast and made it incredibly difficult for Rakkan to keep parrying them.

He was forced to utilize all six of his weapons to prevent Kagil’aktos from landing a direct hit. Simultaneously, though, with his free hand, Kagil’aktos continuously attempted to shoot out black bolts of void energy and wrap them around Rakkan to hit Seliolara.

Snowflake cautiously angled Rakkan’s crossbow wielding echo in the air to have the easiest shot on Kagil’aktos, repeatedly firing bolts down on him each time he began a cast at the precise moment to interrupt the spell.

All the while, Seliolara repeatedly cast druidic healing spells on Rakkan to heal him from the damage he was taking. Despite parrying all of the strikes and reducing the damage from them, he was taking massive amounts of damage. Seeing this, he did his best to incorporate dodging into his parrying, which worked, but Kagil’aktos skill with his sword, and his speed, made it impossible for Rakkan to dodge them all - especially with his need to continuously focus on controlling his crossbow echo to interrupt the spells.

“Damnit.” Rakkan shouted in frustration as he’d realized why he was struggling. His spell control still wasn’t good enough.

“Hahaha, how long can you keep this brutish orc alive, Master of the Tree? I am amazed you would taint your pure magic by using it on such an impure being. How the Dark Elves have fallen from grace without their true leader Koff’aktos!” Kagil’aktos shouted mockingly.

“The only impure being here is you.” Seliolara snapped back at him. “I hope your friends are almost here, I cannot keep this up much longer.” She warned Rakkan anxiously.

“There are plenty of shadows waiting for us still in this room. We must prove to those shadows that you are worthy of their power." Viella said to Lina as the two stood side by side in the doorway of the lower Pale Watch tavern.

“We can’t jump anywhere near the middle, or the door, though. And we can’t deal damage to these guys.” Lina gritted her teeth in frustration as several seekers began approaching them cautiously, spear in one hand and torch in the other.

“Light does not remove the power of a shadow, it simply pushes the shadows together and condenses their power into a smaller area. The brighter the light, the denser and more powerful the shadows you’ll find at its edges. SHADOW TRAP!” Viella shouted as she reached her hands outwards towards the sides of the tavern floor where the shadows had gathered, and from them, black tendrils of mist shot out from the edges of the room like spears and began piercing through the chests of the seekers, binding them in place.

“How?” The battlemaster looked at Viella confused as he found a tendril pierced into his own stomach, binding him in place. “I researched your talents, your shadow trap must connect from one shadow to another…” He roared in anger.

“You can stand in the light as much as you like, but you will always have shadows within you.” Viella grinned back at him.

“You mean, like, in his stomach?” Lina looked at Viella in disbelief.

“To master the shadows means to utilize all of its power, not just the shadows that you can see.” Viella replied. “Now, hurry up and break that rune while they’re held in place. This spell is not that powerful, especially spread on so many targets.”

“Right.” Lina shadowstepped around the edges of the room, utilizing the shadows cast by the torches that the bound seekers were wielding, until she arrived behind the bar where the battlemaster and the door was. Despite being bound, he was still able to manipulate his floating weapons to strike them out at Lina, but she easily spun her body around to dodge and parry the strikes of the downward thrusting spears, longsword, and battleaxe, to get close enough to the door. She then did a long downward slashing motion to cut through the wood where the anti-magic rune had been carved. Once she had, she could almost immediately feel the shadows on the other side of the door, and used them to jumped into the office.

There, she looked up and saw the protection rune on the roof. It was no longer a plain, dull engraving, but was giving off a dark purple glow to signify that it had been activated and was currently being used for a spell of some kind. Without any hesitation, Lina jumped up onto the desk and thrust herself up at the roof, violently slashing a cross shape into the rune. The moment she had, the rune exploded, releasing a burst of void energy as the protection spell was canceled.

“I got it, the protection rune is destroyed!” Lina quickly announced to her party through the party interface.

“Good work Lina. Now, guys.” Aegis paused as a huge smirk grew across his face. “Time for the counterattack.”

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