Not only had Creation requested I prove I could be a valid defender, he also implied that if I could prove such, the support of the Forgelands would increase.
And not in a small way.
Which was a wonderful thought but left me questioning where exactly I was going to get a component that I felt sufficient affinity for to push myself towards Djinn-soul.
It was a shame the hexa-hydra had disappeared. It really would’ve filled a lot of the requirements with a single creature. After meditating on the collection of parts I took from the phase hawk, I realized it wasn't even enough for a minor attunement.
“Can't believe you'd sabotage your friend like that,” Calamity said, leaning forward over the edge of the lift where she was standing with me and Inertia.
Tresla and Calbern had decided to take the motorcycles for a spin. That had been over an hour ago. They’d already made their way back to the Iron Curtain while we’d been invited to a meeting. Creation had been very motherly about his concern for the Forgeborn who'd pledged themselves to help. Much as Creation wanted me to prove I could defend them, they’d already made their deal. They intended to keep it whether or not I fulfilled the Forgelord’s request.
“No,” Inertia hissed out in reply to Calamity’s accusation before following up with an explanation. In her opinion she hadn't sabotaged me. She'd found a way to earn me more support.
After the extended discussion, I agreed. It did sound like I would be able to get a lot more support out of the Forgeborn than if she hadn't made the point.
“Felt like sabotage to me,” Calamity grumbled when the lift finally arrived. The three of us had just stepped onto the lift when a high-pitched shrieking noise filled the air. Before I could properly understand where it was coming from, something struck the side of the lift, causing it to shift in place and lurch.
"Monsters? Here?" Calamity asked, seeming more surprised than afraid.
I hadn’t even clocked that they were monsters by that point, though I’d been in the process of doing so. Even high neural dynamics didn’t stop me from being surprised, it seemed.
The three of us turned to find what looked like an oversized ant picking itself up out of the metal. Metal it was partially embedded in. The metal had not fared particularly well. Its recent detachment from the ant’s side of the lift explained the sudden lurching.
I raised my hand, blasting it with a lightning bolt before it could do more than start to crawl its way out.
However before the lightning bolt reached it, it vanished in a puff of blue light, reappearing only a few feet away from Calamity.
She reacted as fast as I had, one of her spider wing legs piercing through the ant's skull before it could shift and phase again.
“Ants that can teleport, interesting,” Calamity said, holding up the ant on the end of her clawed spider-leg-wing.
“Later,” Inertia hissed, taking a step towards the edge of the lift, her form shifting as she kneeled down, wings shaking free and spreading wide. “Battle.”
Then she launched herself into the air, heading towards the Iron Curtain. A good choice. As it was, it didn’t have the best monster defenses. There was a reason we didn’t try to ram through the wall.
I was about to follow when something else drew my attention: a rapidly expanding end of an airship. It wasn’t the Iron Curtain, though I didn’t have time to figure out its name. Inertia let out a loud cry as the envelope swept over her, capturing her within.
It wasn't just Inertia who was captured as the airship crashed into the lift. Calamity and I were trapped in the darkness as the lift lurched downwards, collapsing atop the next level of petal-like platform that composed the Hellbrand Spire.
That was where it stopped. Forgeborn buildings were built tough enough they’d need to be hit by more than one airship to go tumbling. And the Hellbrand Spire was tougher than most.
Pushing to my feet, I discovered several Forgeborn were fighting against what had to be over a hundred phase ants. They weren’t having a lot of luck.
Guess it was up to me to change their luck.
Thankfully, I hadn't needed to swap out my spells from the monster-hunting ones I’d been using, an updated variation of the ones Nexxa had used shortly before my ascension to Astral-souled.
Her older versions had wiped out thousands of bugs with just three spells.
The first one, Nexxa’s Overwhelming Targetting Matrix of Everything, was only a second-order spell. It barely required me to twist my fingers as I sent it throughout the cabin.
The second spell, Chain Conduction, created the guiding matrix that’d the third spell to blast throughout the entire airship without frying the friendly Forgeborn.
Said third spell, despite having the name, Destroyer of Worlds, was little more than a powered-up lightning bolt. It did use the equivalent mana of two third Order spells, so it wasn’t cheap.
For a brief moment I felt a connection to all the phase ants within the airship. In the next, I could understand why she’d given it the name.
More than the connection to the phase ants, I felt a connection to the first time I witnessed Nexxa obliterate an entire horde of oncoming enemies.
The lightning from Destroyer of Worlds was as brutal as it was immediate, tearing through every one of the phase ants in the cabin. A couple were strong enough they didn't immediately crumble to dust, a reminder that even using the same spells I wasn't as powerful in her specialty as Nexxa.
Another argument for giving up the Archmage path and choosing to focus on one or two affinities.
Unfortunately those ants that survived somehow managed to attune themselves when I cast follow-up Lightning Bolts at them. The new spell barely seemed to affect them as they all changed targets. Ignoring the Forgeborn, they moved to attack me, phasing forward across the deck. A fair if annoying response.
One that would’ve been easily solved if they didn’t have reinforcement phasing in through the hull.
The next couple of minutes were spent rotating through my spells, killing phase ants as often as possible.
Calamity stood nearby, covering my back, spearing any that got too close.
Eventually Inertia emerged from the wreckage of the airship to join us, by which point I must have killed several thousand of the ants. It was enough I’d managed to dip below half of my impressive mana reserves.
Throughout the fight, the airship had been shifting. I hadn’t thought much of it until we managed to push free of the debris with the rest of the airship's former crew, to find ourselves covered in darkness.
We’d descended to the bottom of Ashforge’s Abyssal Depths.
Plumes of volcanic smoke and the soft glow of magma surrounded us, creating what once would’ve felt like a demonic hellscape.
By this point, I was kinda innurred to such. Besides, there was something else that drew my attention.
A massive hydra, fighting an equally massive ant queen.
It was a battle of titans, and we’d fallen straight into their midst.
The hydra was familiar, each of its now seven heads bearing a different element. It had picked up storm magic somewhere along the way, a fact it demonstrated by unleashing a cascade of lightning in the queen’s direction.
The queen dodged by puffing away in a burst of blue light.
Without looking away from the queen, one of its heads reacted to our presence. With a snarl, it spat out a wave of fire that swept down the canyon towards us.
Kneeling down, I raised an Aegis in time to shield all three of us, though it was hot enough the first started failing almost immediately. If not for the lessons from Bahama, I might not have noticed in time to erect a second, this time flooding it with mana to prevent it from falling again.
The phase queen took the hydra's distraction, limited as it might've been, as an opportunity to strike.
Despite the fact that the ant queen was clearly part of the invasion, I decided it was in our best interest to work with it to defeat the hydra. At least for the moment.
The fact it kept phasing between each of the hydra's attacks as it snipped and snapped back at the thing meant we had a sort of synergy in the way we were approaching the fight, since I was using a similar method with my Translocation Matrix.
It was cheaper than tanking the seven-headed hydra’s attacks.
Unfortunately the hydra remained as impervious to damage as it had been the first time we fought it.
Even with most of its attention diverted by the Hive Queen, it managed to endure every spell I had at my disposal with little more than a few scuffed marks.
“Hydras were not supposed to be this resilient.” I complained to Calamity as I teleport-dodged back out of reach of a particularly nasty acid spell. Before she could comment, I added, “I take that back. Hydras are supposed to be exactly this resilient. That's kind of their whole thing but they're not also supposed to spit acid, lightning, fire, and ice at you while being so resistant.”
Again, before she could respond, I teleported away, not wanting the hydra to target her. Even so, she leapt in the sky in the opposite direction.
It had mostly been focused on me and the phase queen, only attacking Calamity and Inertia if they happened to be close to us. Both had been mostly irrelevant. Despite Inertia’s eight-foot form, she wasn't even the size of one of its heads. Neither of them could penetrate tough hide, at least not deeply enough to bother it much.
Eventually we did start to wear it down. Its healing even seemed to slow for no reason I could easily discern. It was also tossing out its big spells with less frequency.
“Think it’s using mana?” I asked Calamtiy as I appeared next to her again.
“Some sort of internal energy. And it’s not so flexible it can adjust its spells. Have you noticed they’re all the same each time?”
“I hadn’t. Guess we’re running it ragged.”
Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones to realize the hydra was losing a battle of attrition, if only barely.
It decided to take the loss.
Before I could step away from Calamity and get back into the fight, it leapt forward towards the phase queen.
The ant punished it, snatching two of its heads. In return the hydra ate one of the phase queen's.
For anything other than a hydra, that’d be a bad trade all around. However, seeing as the phase queen only had one head that was one more than it could afford to spare.
The phase queen's body hit the ground, nearly impaling me when it phased towards us, some instinct just a fraction of a second from keeping its head on its body.
Still I felt that, with how the Hydra had weakened and especially after losing two heads that didn't seem to be regenerating as quickly, there was a chance that Inertia, Calamity and I could defeat it before it retreated.
Of course, that was the moment it disappeared in a flash of blue light. The exact same blue light that the phase queen had been using.
I spotted it a short distance down the canyon. I’d barely oriented on it before it disappeared again. Calamity thudded to the ground beside me, all four of her spider wings impaling the ashy earth.
“Did it just run away after learning how to teleport?” Calamity asked, a slightly manic giggle breaking through her facade. “What an interesting creature.”
“It did,” I confirmed, looking after it and, if I wasn't mistaken, it now had the same eight elements I did. Before, it’d be a nice upgrade. Now, it’d be an ideal sacrifice. On the other hand, I doubted I'd be able to kill it at this point.
Not without a great deal of preperation.
Inertia thudded down on the other side, flexing her wing. She’d taken a blow trying to do something more than leave a mild scratch. It’d cost her more than we’d gained.
“Tough,” Inertia hissed out, shaking her head, then she turned back, looking up. I nodded with one last glance in the direction of the now octo-hydra, then I shook my head.
I had a feeling I was going to run into it again, but for the moment, there were monsters that weren’t running.
We just needed to get above the cloud of soot and ash to find them.