Chapter 136: Chapter 136: Allegro

There’s something that statics often don’t understand about civilization, and grounders almost never.

Civilization isn’t about feelings, and it’s not about mastery. It’s not about moral fortitude and ethical behavior in the darkness, it’s not about authority, and it’s especially not about willpower and determination and grit. All of these things are largely irrelevant to real civilization, the kind where nobody goes hungry and you travel through the Void.

Civilization is about prior planning, because when the air circulator breaks, when the heat exchanger fails, none of those things will help you. The only thing that will save you from cooking in your body heat or suffocating is having already solved the problem a thousand times, and having that solution at hand to implement; tools, expertise, and materials, all in the right place at the right time.

You can run a patrol boat or a mining rig by spackle and wishful thinking. You can run a grounder continent with ten billion people living on it with just-in-time logistics and an extra helping of exploitation whenever things get tight. But you can’t run a Worldship without preparation, without planning. Because it’s not just the air circulator, and it’s not just the heat exchanger; there’s tens of thousands of macrosystems, most of which are made out of more systems, and every single one of them has backups and repair plans and checklists.

Conveniently, given that by the time I realized I was being mesmerized I was no longer capable of wanting to oppose the effects, I’m not a grounder, and I kept spilling Dispel and Suppress Magic orbs and various amplifiers out. See, not wanting to oppose the effects didn’t mean I wasn’t aware they had to end eventually, and this way, I could pre-commit to when that would be and relax and enjoy a very pleasant scene.

Prior planning. Wins all around, wins for everyone.

Well, except for the sed girl, who gets shock and frustration instead, hopefully. So I guess mostly just wins for me.

It takes me a moment to reorient, but we have a plan, and the plan takes in account the fact that while Amber and Zidanya can run at a full sprint through basically any terrain, Sara and I absolutely can’t. So while Khalal runs for the nearest outcropping—we’d planned for forest, but this is broken, rocky ground and jagged spikes of stone rising into the air—Amber scoops me up in her arms and Zidanya shifts into her chosen battle form.

The placements were 2-2, as we’d more or less expected, so we’re going into the fight on a theoretically even footing. That even footing isn’t good enough to get us to the obligatory river that splits the two sides of the arena, not and get into a position where our opponents can’t just blitz us, so Khalal guides us from on high towards a somewhat-elevated position about two-thirds of the way towards the river. Ze’s too high to carry on a conversation, so zir directions are hand-sign and pointing; Zidanya’s perception is limited by bony ridges over and around her eyes, wide-set for a broad field of view but unable to look up, which means it’s Amber translating between Khalal and the rest of the party while Sara focuses on not falling off of the charging, quadrupedal Zidanya.

Between my need to keep summoning the right mix of Orbs and motes—a pure singleton spellbreak loadout like I used to shatter the mesmerization isn’t optimal, since it’s overkill for any piece of magic they can wield—and the roaring in my head from being upside down, I’m not much use in the conversation, but that’s okay too.

It’s a profoundly uncomfortable trip over, with Amber’s chainmail digging into my side and, once she’s shifted me into a position where she can really run and carry me at the same time, digging into my stomach. Even the new armor, enchanted to spread impacts over as wide an area as possible, doesn’t do much for the way the links grind into me, and the upside-down jouncing and jostling makes the gorge rise in my throat.

She drops me somewhat ungently onto the ground once we get to the point Khalal’s got picked out for us. The two of them, my Paladin and the two-meter-at-the-shoulder, two-thousand-kilogram quadruped Zidanya’s turned into, aren’t even winded from having forged a path through the low prickly brush, but Sara and I are thankful for the breather. Sara stretches her legs, wincing, while I heave a few breaths on my knees and then shove myself to my feet, getting a set of scrapes on my palm that Amber heals with a touch without looking.

It’s a decent position. Not great, but we weren’t looking for great; actually, this is a little bit better than what we’d planned for. There’s about twenty meters of open ground, moderately unsteady footing but nothing Ghosts can’t charge across, with only a mild upslope. It’s enough of a shooting gallery that I mix in a few offensive orbs, just in case, but mostly we’re going with plan A. There’s even a saying for it, in Amber’s modern Cadoran.

Prepare to receive cavalry.

Amber’s got a long spear-type weapon with what looks like a sword on it, held loosely and lightly in both of her hands like she’s about to spin it. She’s our backup plan, but she’s a quite reasonable one; Khalal has spatial magic locked down to the point where Raoul won’t be able to use Blink, and they no longer have Sun’s Glory for Wing We To Battle, so a properly braced spear should be able to physically stop Raoul from connecting with me and Sara.

Khalal’s screech of challenge feels like it reverberates against the world itself as Raoul phases through the nearest of the rocky outcroppings, snapping into being fully real on our side of it.

No Obstacles Bar Our Path, I tell myself. This is why we aren’t trying to fort up somewhere, why we needed open ground where they couldn’t just run through the terrain to jump into our faces. And then it feels like the world is slowing down as Zidanya starts to charge forwards, picking up steam, and Khalal’s magic grips the fabric of space and warps it.

My orbs start going off, and the Motes that are empowering and amplifying them. I didn’t even see Peacebringer, but they’ve cast three spells in relatively quick succession, at least one of which was Slumber, and all three of them have been countered. I still can’t see them, but I do see Varad, coming in from the flank, and Amber pivots neatly towards him to counter-charge as his flesh ripples and warps, and a meter-and-a-half man with a pair of blades becomes a two-and-a-half meter demon with upswept horns and burning eyes that match the balls of fire he’s started throwing at Amber. Ancestral Form, and he’s still charging forwards, Into the Fray, and my eyes are still moving, looking for—

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There. Easy launches herself off of a pillar of rock, a slender form highlighted against the sun as she draws her bow. Sara’s whispering under her breath as her hands are suddenly shrouded in mandalas, spinning around her wrists. Seven points of light glow in one of them, and five in the other, and then my attention is on Easy as I return fire at the same moment she hits the apex of her leap and unloads on us.

Volley Fire. Crystalline Onslaught. Bow Mastery. Shared Ranged Mastery. This is what she’s made for, and Khalal is occupied elsewhere, ripping apart the fabric of space to slow down Raoul’s charge and speed Zidanya’s. My spell-disrupters aren’t any use defensively here, but when my first shot—fire, fire like the forging heat of the sun—gets swallowed by a cloak of shadows that spreads itself out to slow Easy’s fall, they fire off to strip off the effects of Shrouding Shadows.

Everything is happening too fast for me to track. Amber yells in a mixture of challenge and pain, Zidanya’s footsteps are shaking the ground under our feet, and Easy shoots one of my two remaining orbs out of the air before putting another two into flight towards Khalal.

Lightning flashes, actinic white, and I scream in counterpoint with Easy as the arc sears itself into my retinas even through my closed eyelids. There’s a shattering sound that I recognize from Sara’s wards breaking and a discharge that means she’s managed to feed a spell of hers into the ionized pathway connecting the elemental orb and the Ranger, and I open my eyes to blurrily watch two arrows pass through Sara’s wards as though they aren’t there, and then I hear the sickening thunk of them striking true.

They shift, as they do. No, they… are revealed, as Khalal reels and falls, with a pair of arrows that couldn’t have landed from the arc they were traveling.

An illusion. Sara caught the volley on her ward, but the pair of arrows after was traveling under cover of illusion. I don’t have another spellbreaker up, but I start building one as my mana regenerates, and I take an unsteady step forwards, looking for the sed who’s my and Sara’s responsibility.

The world shakes, and I almost fall. With Khalal’s death—fuck, fuck, fuck—Zidanya and Raoul have come out of the spatially-warped tunnels they were running through, and Zidanya has connected on her charge. She’s going maybe twenty meters per second by the time she does, which is utterly unreal, and Raoul gets slammed into the outcropping of rock he’d phased through with enough force to nearly knock me off my feet tens of meters away. The shapeshifted Druid’s horns gore deep into his side, and then she’s back to her human form, plunging a short blade into his chest and pulling with what seems like every corded bit of muscle from her hips to her wrists.

Raoul’s entrails spill onto the ground, and that’s two deaths. Three, I correct myself, as Easy’s body slams into the dusty floor of the arena, and then Sara’s pivoting to face Peacebringer and I finally spot the fucking sed illusionist.

My first few steps are stumbling, but they firm up, and I give my orb a simple tasking. They fire when I’ve taken three more steps and have started to pick up the pace into a run, which shows that she’s focusing on me, and I get just enough mana to generate another one loaded with Counterspell. I give it the same conditions, fire off when she does something to stop me from killing her, and it goes off about two seconds later.

My first punch is blocked, but that’s fine. She’s not much of a melee combatant, and neither am I, but she’s not in the mood for it and I’ve just had someone I was trying to keep alive die on me.

She wraps a tail around my second punch, pulling me off-center and trying to sweep my feet with another. I hop over it, pulling her in with the tail she’s got my arm wrapped in, and manage to put a knee into her stomach. Not as hard as I would have liked, but hard enough to jar her a little, and as she steps backwards I step with her, right foot forwards, body turning side-on to her, left foot rising and lashing out with all of my remaining momentum.

It catches her under the ribs, and I hear something crack comfortingly under the strike. I follow it, tackling her to the ground, and she tries to roll on me but my knee and all of my weight is on her sternum and I get a solid punch in before she grabs my wrists in hers, moving too fast for my eyes to track.

There’s some kind of magical enhancement on her, and it lets her spring off of her tails and slam me down on my back on the ground. The breath leaves my lungs, and with careful, blurring-fast strikes she has both of my arms somehow disabled, tingling and refusing to move.

I can tell she’s going to say something, or is saying something, but I don’t have any patience for it. She’s made the mistake of bringing her face close to mine, more concerned with keeping my body pinned under hers, thinking that momentarily disabling my arms has won her the fight.

Motes are cheaper than orbs. Disenchant fires, and I slam my head into hers. Once, twice, three times, putting to work every crunch I’d ever done in a workout routine, every piece of core strength I’d ever scrabbled together. Four times, then five, and on the sixth I miss, because she’s slumped down and something is wrong with my proprioception.

I shoulder her off to the side. I don’t have much left in the tank, and the world is spinning around me, but I close my eyes and rise onto my knees. I find her head eventually, through the pins-and-needles, and when Amber’s distinctive footsteps are close enough for me to hear over the ringing in my ears, I’m still rhythmically slamming her head into the ground next to the puddle of my vomit, fingers tangled in her silky fur.

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