Chapter 126: Chapter 115: Assessing the situation

Levin and Rolwen continued to follow Tiaren through the strangely grass-covered town as they moved from cover to cover, sticking primarily to the alleyways between the short mud-brick buildings throughout the city. Dandelion fluff continued to drift down, the seeds of this thick carpet of grass.

All around them, there were a number of trees launching large wooden projectiles into the air like artillery shells. Once these wooden missiles were fired into the air, toward the center of the city, they would burst and drop their pay-load of more of this dandelion fluff. According to Tia, those wooden projectiles were a defense mechanism Asaren had programmed into them. When threatened, the tree would self-destruct by firing all those projectiles off into the air in order to increase the population of this earth-element devouring plant.

It seemed Asaren had somehow crafted the perfect bio-weapon to fight against these gnomes. All the evidence pointed to the gnomes still being a great deal stronger, but this stuff seriously weakened them by taking away the enemy’s most devastating weapon. These gnomes had a magic that could turn the earth itself into a powerful weapon, and this rapidly populating plant neutralized that power.

Tadalin, the Zu that Tia had apparently tamed, was flying around above the city now. It would seem his fight outside the wall had concluded. With any luck, that meant there were now two less gnomes in the enemy forces. If Tia had also managed to kill that guy she punched into the wall on the far side of the city, that would mean there should be nine gnomes left. The question as to whether or not Terlu was one of those nine was completely up in the air.

After circling the city for a while, Tadalin suddenly dived for the center of one of the crystal towers, aiming straight at the ball of red light that shined like an eye in the center of it. At the very last minute in his dive, the large flying beast pulled up and impacted the tower hard with his legs in a position that almost made it look like he’d landed horizontally on it. The impact was enough to create a large crack on the surface of the tower, easily three times the diameter of the massive flying beast himself.

The large creature kicked off the tower and the broken crystal fell away, leaving a crater in the side of the tower. After being so nearly exposed, the light retreated downward in order to flee the large two-headed flying lion.

The powerful semi-divine beast screeched in rage, producing a bird-like sound despite the lion-like heads. He dived down for the ground in pursuit of his fleeing prey.

One of the stranger things about this whole situation, though, was that there didn’t seem to be a lot of people around. In fact, since coming back into the city, Levin hadn’t even seen a single one.

They were all gathering at the temple in the center of town before the attack. It could be that even the stragglers had run to the temple once the attack started. The temple was no longer visible though. It was now covered completely in a giant wooden dome. It was pretty clear this was for the purpose of protecting the innocent towns people, and it was also blatantly obvious it was someone from their side who did it considering the material it was made of.

The top of the dome even had a carpet of green grass on top of it due to all the fluttering seeds, creating the strange illusion that the dome had been there for decades rather than the hour tops that was probably closer to reality.

“Man, just how much has Asa been doing up here. She even had time to fortify the temple to protect the people here?” Levin observed.

“Actually, that wasn’t Asa.” Tiaren said. “It grew up there while me and her were talking. Asa says that’s where mother was supposed to go, so I guess that means she must be the one who made it.”

“Ms. Kiriia did that?” Levin said with a little bit of surprise.

Rolwen just laughed at that. “Well, Eirlathion was always saying that she’s got a lot of power. Remember that forest sanctuary spell he taught her? I bet that’s what that is. It must have been powered up because she cast it on Asaren’s plants.”

“Well, I guess that means the civilians are safe then.” Levin commented.

“There’s probably a few stragglers still hiding in their houses.” Rolwen commented. “Not much we can really do about that at this point though. There’s some fights that are just beyond us.”

He shook his head and then looked over at Tia, their now bald-headed friend from three years ago. “So.” He said. “You gonna tell us what’s with the new hair-do?”

Tia’s eyes went a little unfocused in response.

“I got caught in a fire.” She said. “I was able to heal my body, but it didn’t grow my hair back.”

Rolwen’s jaw suddenly went slack when he heard this as he realized what he was hearing. “Oh.” He said, suddenly loosing his steam. “Uhh… sorry to hear that.” He said awkwardly.

Levin looked between the two of them in the suddenly awkward silence. As much as he enjoyed seeing Rolwen finally stopped up short from his constant acting like an ass-hole, this really wasn’t the time for awkward personal stuff.

“Uhh… so, Tia. You and Asaren made a plan or something, right? What are we supposed to be doing right now anyway?” Levin asked.

“Ah, yes.” Tia immediately perked back up. “So, like I explained before. The idea is that Asa keeps going around and throwing up more trees and keeping this anti-earth grass going. She had to give it pretty simple instructions in order to get it started, so the trees have to be grown with individual uses of magic. The gnomes are after her, so we shouldn’t meet up. She’s better at keeping herself hidden, and we’d just make it harder for her to hide.

“Meanwhile, I’m going to be here keeping you two safe. You are their secondary targets, so you need someone like me who can act as the muscle here. I could do this pretty easy just by using a bit of wind magic to suspend us all in the sky, but that would just drag this on until they eventually manage to capture Asa, so that’s not an option. Our objective is to follow Asaren’s activity and try to find an isolated small number of gnomes and kill them if we can. Our goal is to either eliminate them all or force them into a retreat.”

“Hmm…” Rolwen hummed thoughtfully and put a hand to his chin. “Yeah. I like that plan. Asa’s the distraction, and then we hit them with the big guns, which is Tia. That punch you did earlier is demonstration enough of what kind of havoc you can unleash. Speaking of that though, I hope you have some better attacks than punching. Even if that hit might have been enough to take that guy out, these guys are definitely made of pretty tough stuff. Hitting them really hard might not be the best option.”

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“Well, Terry has also come up with some other spells, including a laser spell. It’s not strong enough though. I managed to keep a laser right on one of their heads for a good ten seconds earlier. It lit his head-gear on fire, but his body seemed to handle it just fine.” She said.

“Wait, it lit his robe on fire?” Rolwen said. He took a glance back at Levin, and he immediately knew where this was going as the two of them exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

“I think you should be using those lasers a lot more with these guys then.” Rolwen said.

Tia just looked at him skeptically, but she wasn’t actively objecting. Rather, she seemed to be waiting for an explanation.

Levin had enough of Rolwen’s games here, so he just started explaining. “The red robes amplify their magic. We heard about it from some of the human mages in the city.”

“Uhh… yeah.” Rolwen said, glaring back at Levin for having stolen his dramatic thunder. “Anyway, if your lasers can just burn off the robes, maybe we can have an easier time with them?”

“Huh… Yeah.” Tia said as she was looking out in a particular direction.

“Uhh… Tia? Did you get that?” Rolwen asked.

“Uh? Yeah. Burn off the robes. It sounds good.” Tia said, and then looked back off in the distance. “Asaren hasn’t moved for a while. She’s staying in one place.” She said.

“Huh? How can you tell?” Rolwen asked and looked off in the same direction Tia was looking. Levin looked too, and he realized that there was a bunch of particularly tall trees in that direction, easily twice the height of the rest, and clustered together very tightly as they seemed to be almost climbing the ruby wall like ivy.

“I formed a connection with her when we were travelling between the worlds. It lets me absorb power from her. I don’t have her oneness to the void method that gives her infinite spirit and mana energy, but I am still a leech. I can use the connection to feed off her energy. But, that’s not all. I also get to sense her spirit energy through the link. It lets me know what she’s feeling, and I can also always tell what direction she’s in relative to myself.” She explained.

“It’s just you who can sense her? Can she sense you back?” Rolwen asked.

“I’m pretty sure she can’t.” Tia said.

Levin and Rolwen both watched the large and thick bunch of trees continue to creep up the wall. One of the trees shook like it had just received a very heavy impact. Whatever was going on over there, there was definitely active fighting.

“So… what’s she feeling right now?” Rolwen asked.

Tia scrunched up her brows as she considered Rolwen’s question. “She’s… focused. Focused on a goal that’s almost in sight. But, she’s also stressed. Something’s making it difficult….”

She shook her head.

“It’s really hard to get a good read on what’s happening from sensing emotions alone.” She said.

“Umm… shouldn’t we go help her or something?” Levin asked.

“Huh? But…” Tia stammered.

“Asa said to keep separate?” Rolwen said, supplying the objection that was probably on her mind. “Look, you’ve been off with Terry for a while, so you haven’t been around for Asa’s training. One of her constant mantras is that plans always change, and you have to keep re-evaluating them based on new information. Being adaptable and weighing the information you have is way more effective than strictly following a plan to the letter. In fact, following a plan to the letter is a good way to get yourself and everyone else killed. Plans never survive first contact with the enemy. If the situation changes, you need to change to keep up.”

“Do you think Asa might need our help?” Levin asked.

Tia’s eyes got clouded for a moment, looking down toward the ground. This only lasted for a moment though, and when she looked back up, her eyes were suddenly full of determination. “No, she can probably handle herself, but I think we should go anyway. If Asa’s making this big of a scene, it’s going to attract a lot of attention from the gnomes. This is our opportunity to take out a few of them.”

“Alright. Let’s teach those earth-bending psycho blood-cultists what we’re all about!” Rolwen cheered and pumped his fist. With that decided, they all started their march toward what was likely the most active battlefield in the city.

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