Master of Dominion-Chapter 76: Sigil defences
After roughly thirty minutes, Rael had recovered a bit of his aether while at the same time picking up some points from what he could only call scientific gibberish Xaphxan was telling him.
Regardless, he could already make out a way he believed the spell might work for him, except it probably won’t be more of a bolt anymore, but all he needed was the destructibility of the spell.
Rael held his sword, bringing the tip closer to his forehead, about to use the WarMaster’s Precision along with the process of casting the Eye of Critic spell to use his sword as a circuit. But Suddenly, loud unknown sounds started resounding from every corner of the woods around the territory.
Rael slowly dropped his sword to his side as he got up, his eyes staring at nowhere in particular since the sounds were coming from different directions. Yasmin too had to break her meditation and rise to her feet, her already fierce expression becoming cold.
"It seems the wave is about to continue..." Xaphxan exclaimed, already anticipating those disgusting Withered Vermins again.
"Shhh," Rael shushed him as he tilted his head to the rhythms of the sounds, which were clearly coming closer and seemed to follow some sort of pattern.
’These sounds? Are those screeches? Why do they seem familiar?’ Rael could swear he’d heard those sounds before; it sounded like the wails and at the same time the hiss of a certain kind of creature he was familiar with, he just couldn’t place what it was.
"Bats," Yasmin muttered beneath her breath, but loud enough for Rael and Xaphxan to hear.
"What?" Rael asked.
"Those are bats," Yasmin repeated, before pointing towards the clearing with her pointing finger slightly facing upwards.
Rael and Xaphxan followed, and indeed they saw a faint silhouette of what they could only identify as what used to be an Aether bat, now corrupted and disfigured with tentacles and claw-like wings.
That alone wasn’t even the main cause of the terrified frown that had come upon both Yasmin and Rael’s faces, and the tense horror that had come over Xaphxan’s , because the entire surroundings had darkened, even making the little glow from the red moon seem non-existent.
The exact cause of this phenomenon were silhouettes ,silhouettes of bats, Withered bats that were so vast in number that they canopied the entire sky above the territory.
"Oh... no," Xaphxan trembled, his eyes flashing with lost hope, which Rael noticed and immediately placed his hand on Xaphxan’s right shoulder.
"Calm yourself," he said, staring directly into Xaphxan’s terrified eyes. He knew Xaphxan’s fear was warranted considering he was probably the youngest here, way younger than he was, so he made sure his next statement carried as much confidence as he could muster. "We still have the arrays and, more so, we have ourselves. So fuck that, if whatever is out there is intelligent or not; what matters is this is my territory." Rael uttered that last line in a higher pitch, and also with the words that followed: "And I am not losing it to some god-damned parasitic shit of the world, no fucking way."
Xaphxan stared at Rael, dazed, before taking a deep breath, for he’d felt a certain kind of force ,one similar to the one that had seized his aether before,but instead, now he felt clear-headed by it somehow. Yasmin too, off to the side, felt something similar, except it wasn’t as metaphysical as it was to Xaphxan; to her, it was something like charisma.
’ So he does have a little charisma,’ she thought with a certain flicker crossing her cold eyes
And indeed, Rael’s expression became dumbfounded just for a bit, for he’d seen a new stat pop up on his status panel
[Charisma: 1 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6]
He squinted at it for a bit before shifting that aside since they had more pressing matters, if not dire. He turned his head to the sound of footsteps and could see Iyvre and Ayobe walk over, having left that side of the sigil,well, not like them being there would have helped, since it wasn’t just two sides that were about to be attacked.
Noticing their serious expressions, he chose to speak first.
"We’ll have to use the rebound and kinetic attacks of the sigils," he had simply chosen to forgo preserving attacks for the last nights. "Take the internal controls of the arrays," he said to Ayobe, before directing his gaze to Yasmin and Xaphxan. "You both will have to provide as much cover as possible while I and Iyvre try to relieve the array of their relentless attacks."
"Against an aerial wave?" Yasmin countered point-blank.
"It’s not a choice," Iyvre asserted stoutly. "We’re the only ones with the range and the power to thin the wave from the outside."
While it would seem as if they had come up with a valid plan, nothing could have prepared them for what happened next.
Screeeeee!
It first started as low-pitched shrieks from the Withered spawns until it rose to a very high, uniformed pitch with all the sound directed at the array, immediately making it flare up in defense from the sound attacks that sent vibrations through the very air.
"Tsk," Rael held his two ears as even though the two sigils blocked most of the force behind the attack, it definitely didn’t stop the high pitch from affecting their hearing.
The pitch grew louder, making the sigils flicker even more and even draining two aether beasts dry to power it more. But then, the first sigil suddenly dimmed before expanding with astonishing speed and force, slamming into several dozen Withered bats and smashing them into rotten, bloody pulps.
And that wasn’t even the end of it; the trees which Ayobe had used as a construct for the array instead of fences glowed with a blinding yellow light, as well as the one Ayobe placed her palm on with her eyes closed. It drew on more energy, draining six more aether beasts at once, causing the expanding array to halt as the dome vibrated then suddenly exploded outwards, sending an aether-powered shockwave into the air.
The blast smashed countless of the Withered bats into smithereens and even evaporated what remained of them into black smoke.
