My hands were already grasping onto the soldier who busted into my house by his leather armor at his neck, lifting him against the wall when I fully woke up.
"SIR! SIR PLEASE S-" the soldiers' incessant whining finally halted once I released my grasp. He fell stumbling to the floor, clearly ill prepared for falling.
"Explain why you just broke my fucking door down."I growled, rubbing the crust from my eyes.
"Korbin sent me, we're under attack! It's other humans this time." The soldier answered in a shaky tone.
"What?" I said, immediately snatching my robes and cowl from the edge of my bed while scrambling to squeeze my boots on. The rush of stats from each time I put on my gear has grown far less bothersome after the first time, making rushing out of the door and sprinting for the Pylon building easier on my body.
"Captain!! Front ga-" the soldier who so rudely woke me's voice faded behind, though I heard enough to gather where Korbin was. Earth rumbling booms echoed outside of the settlement walls, our soldiers filing through the front gate and spilling out into the charred remains of the surrounding jungle. The sun was still slowly climbing high, the angle visually contorting the rays of light peering through the trees above. In the distance, dozens of soldiers stood with chromatic metal shields in defense of more offensively equipped forces of all types. Arching spheres of dark wriggling energy hurtled high above the trees, barreling toward our settlement wall. A fiery missile launched from one of our soldiers manning our artillery blasted into the dark energy sending both energies dispersing into the atmosphere above.
Bodies bounced off one another as our forces funneled out of the settlement gate, charging ahead through the scattering blasts of differing energies blasting into the jungle floor. The insane amount of artillery support used during the last Pylon defense yesterday had practically leveled all trees and vegetation surrounding our settlement, leaving a relatively open space for whoever was attacking us to cast from afar. Phoebe was pushed further than the rest of us, firing consecutive flaming arrows atop Becky who slithered from side to side to avoid incoming magical projectiles. Dozens of their forces slowly marched forward, led by their shimmering shielded front line.
"TOM!" Korbin's voice from behind me pierced through the chaotic cacophony of explosions and battle cries. He was standing beside the stream of soldiers pouring out of the settlement, just under one of our many turrets attached to the outer walls. I jogged over, confused as to why he hadn't pushed ahead.
"What's going on?! Where's our captains?" I yelled, periodically glancing back toward our attackers making sure not to be blindsided by their massive dark magical volleys.
"Up ahead, I couldn't get to them before they sprinted out there. Listen To-"
"What the hell are we waiting for?! Our missiles might be hitting them right now?!" I asked, instantly frustrated with being held up for seemingly no reason right now.
"No Tom, you don't understand, this battle is not going to last." Korbin replied. His eyelids flashed wide looking over my shoulder before tackling me, the blast of concussive force lurching my head back before bouncing across the jungle floor. A cloud of dark, wavering mist hovered around the blast's impact point, cutting off all visuals on the section of the settlement wall behind it. Korbin and I quickly clambered to our feet, though he snagged my shoulder before I could sprint ahead towards our attackers.
"What?! This battle might be over by now if you let me go!" I said, ripping my shoulder free from Korbin's grasp.
"Fucking listen for a second, Baloris contacted me this morning, we have a-" the feint echo of Barry's thunderous voice roaring in pain removed the last semblance of patience left to hear Korbin out, finally sprinting ahead to catch up with my friends.
"TOM! STOP, WE ONLY H-" Korbin's pleading calls quickly faded behind me as I sprinted toward the line of Shielded warriors at the edge of the jungle biome. Explosions both in the air and on the ground multiplied, unleashing a torrent of fire and dark whirling clouds like. Giants who moved slower than our human soldiers suffered the greatest losses to the opposing explosives, many of them disappearing in a veil of darkness with every shadowy blast.
Lonni was the first face I recognized weaving through our soldiers charging across the battlefield, sending the mace at the end of his flail through the air and over one of the shielded enemy soldiers. His arm jerked back, ripping a hooded fighter wearing cloth robes lifelessly over the enemy frontline by their skull.
Peering ahead, Cassi was in the middle of throwing a head kick when Steve swooped in from the sky, snatching the hooded human soldier in his maw from in front of her. Cassi still threw the kick, whipping her hips around and smashing her shin into the soldiers to her side. Sprinting toward her, Barry emerged from behind a crowd of shielded enemy warriors, all wearing black and cherry red combinations of armor.
Barry's body unleashed a burst of pure flames that blasted around him like a halo of fire. The blast sent a section of the enemy front line in burning disarray, sprinting and rolling across the jungle floor trying to put themselves out. The chrome shields now fallen to the earth suddenly lifted into the sky, launching through the air deeper into our unknown enemy's back line.
A torrent of swirling blood red energy blasted into Barry's back, passing around him and towards our soldiers. Barry didn't react painfully, rather curiously turning around to view the seemingly harmless tunnel of energy. Behind him, a slender man wearing a wide collared black jacket with dozens of buttons along its seams stood with his hand out,the source of said red energy. A black wide brimmed cowboy had sat atop his pale, clean shaven face that grinned deviously from ear to ear. The man's second hand was lifted to the side of him, unleashing a similar shaped torrent of blue energy onto his allies on the front lines.
My eyes narrowed, noticing the glimmer of an insanely sharp blade dance in the light above the enemy front line, directly at the center of the slender mages blur tunnel. Sod ripped into the air behind me sprinting toward the enemy front line receiving the blue stream of energy. The red stream flashed across me and my soldiers like a flashlight in the dark, still leaving everyone visually uneffected.
Water Stepping between two chrome shielded soldiers and slicing into their respective Achilles tendons, a subtle warmth overcame my skin as I dashed into the path of the blue energy. Having little time to concern myself with sensations other than pain and danger, I ignored the feeling instead electing to chop away at our foes considerable numbers. The crackling lightning mana that writhed along my twinblade's chains instantly extinguished, replaced with water mana that crashed in concert with my strikes, unleashing Tidal Flurry onto a line of half a dozen shielded soldiers.
The 7th enemy chrome shielded warrior finally noticed me diving through his friends, turning his large, incredibly shiny shield in front of his body. My blade slammed into his shield, knocking the warrior onto his back while also slowing my momentum. Tidal Flurry quickly deactivated, Lightning mana returning into the chains hanging between my wrists. A purple poof followed by a dark figure at the corner of my eye gave me a quick startle, flicking my blade to the side and instinctively deflecting my new enemy's dagger barreling for my gut. The hooded assailant stomped onto the floor, sinking into his shadow and disappearing.
Spinning around, another low crouching hooded figure with dark cloth covering their face manifested from thin air in front of me, lurching two daggers toward my throat. Their blades grazed across my neck leaning to the side, letting their momentum sink their chest into one of my blades. I twisted the weapon in their stomach while stabbing my second blade into their neck, ripping both free with a sickening squelch.
Two more teleporting rogues manifested at my sides, causing me to Water Step in retreat back toward my soldiers who were slowly pushing forward. A sharp pain shot down my side before realizing I was barreling to the sod covered jungle floor. My head turned toward where I'd been hit to find a large man holding a variety of melee weapons on his back placing his leg down to the ground. Realizing I'd been kicked, and that this guy was making his own push into our front line, I dashed forward to properly introduce myself.
My hilts and blades slapped together as I stomped to halt my momentum, sending a Lightning Bolt straight for the soldier who'd kicked me when I wasn't looking. I leapt into the air anticipating the bolt to stun the warrior, preparing a downward stab. Instead, one of the metal shields flew in the path of my Lightning Bolt, taking the brunt of the energy and sending the shield bouncing off of his weapons covered back. The warrior didn't even appear to notice, instead skillfully dicing through a section of our front line by the twos while constantly switching weapons from his back.
Glancing around, my eyes locked onto a massive silver skinned giant, his hands waving through the air in violent and sudden jerking gestures. He carried two massive packs with huge pockets slung over his shoulder and around his waist, wearing only leatherwork armor himself. A massive slab of some form of metal floated freely from his pack, one of his hands twisting around it as it compressed into another shield that flung forward, disappearing into our clashing frontlines.
Screams of agony drew my attention to an enemy rogue, crawling out of a cluster of soldiers in melee. His hand gripped down at his leg, revealing a baseball sized hole in his upper thigh that was bleeding profusely. It didn't take long for the rogue to go completely pale, then limp. The familiar flash of a violet glowing halberd slashing into a chrome shielded soldier's collarbone brought an odd relief at realizing the culprit of the prior rogue's demise. The next instant, his halberd disappeared leaving behind the faintest violet trail.
I stumbled back nearly tripping on a charred tree root as Cassi's massive frame flew across my face through the air, slamming her boot into a hooded rogue who must've snuck behind me. Her hand clasped her hip as she snatched the falling rogue by his cloth robes on the way down with the other. The fist at her hip slammed into the rogue's fist, revealing a hand sized metal grip. Once her fist blasted into the rogue's face however, the grip expanded at both ends into a 6 foot long bo staff. Cassi snuck her new staff under the soldiers neck, ripping violently up releasing a bone chilling series of cracks as the rogue fell lifeless. Cassi slammed the end of her staff into the ground, pole vaulting past me again into another flanking rogue.
"Fucking FIGHT, Tom?!" She yelled over her shoulder, swinging her staff more like a baseball bat into another rogue's skull amidst the mess of clashing swords and shields. I took one step forward to join in the effort when another rogue soldier appeared at my side, this time in my peripheral vision. My foot barely slid in a C-formation quick enough to spin around the rogue's lunging blade, a knife nearly the length of my forearm. Locking his wrist in my chains, my arm snapped forward straightening my elbow for a slash at the grappled rogue's throat.
Just as my steel was about to pierce through his exposed throat, the rogue instantly imploded into a small puff of violet energy, reappearing at my opposite shoulder. The rogue unleashed a flurry of slashes, revealing a second incredibly long dagger. A searing hot flash of pain shot up my forearm missing one of my parry's. Luckily, the rogue leaned forward too far on his last slash, not having enough time to react as I gripped the back of his neck and slammed my knee into his nose.
The rogue stumbled back two paces before evaporating into a violet mist, reappearing right in front of me again launching a double handed downward stab. A smile crept across my face having realized this asshole was using void magic after his first teleport, already extending one of my blades forward in anticipation for a counter-attack. The rogues eyes spread wide under his cowl, no doubt realizing how royally fucked he was.
Or, he would have been, if the entire world hadn't completely disappeared, replaced by an all too familiar plane devoid of anything other than absolute white.
"Uhh…hello? No face?!" I yelled, with not even a hollow reverberation of my voice to be heard in response. I walked a few paces in a direction before wondering if I'd died in battle, and just didn't notice. An anxiety for my troops and, admittedly more importantly my friends in the midst of a battle with an unknown force. The fact they had a void affinity fighter paired with those guys sinking into the shadows like the Canis-Tigris Lonni and I fought on our first night on this fucked up version of earth.
Is it even earth?
Memories of sitting through a boring philosophy class in college flashed into my head, having recalled a particular subject our professor brought up that gave me pause. 'The Ship Of Theseus' was some paradoxical thought experiment, questioning if one were to replace every square inch of said vessel, whether or not it could still be considered the same ship. I never could come to my own personal conclusive answer to it, though I can't help but feel a level of jealousy in the ease of such a question.
At least their ship still looked the same.
Without warning, all of my momentum dropped into the floor, sinking into a vacuum of blinding white light. I didn't have time to let out a shocked whimper before my feet clapped onto a hard stone surface, with the murmurs of hundreds of voices chatting all around me. Peering around me, I found myself standing within a massive black and grey metallic room filled with the entirety of our human warriors I'd just been battling alongside not 10 minutes ago. Korbin, Cassi, Lonni and Derrick were in a frantic discussion at the end of the room in front of a massive viewing area.
Squeezing through our troops, I noticed the innumerable square spaces in the seemingly endless walls outside of…wherever this is. Korbin's eyes snapped onto me as I approached staring past them into the endless abyss below and above us.
"Oh good, you didn't die." Korbin said, waving his hand for me to join them. My eyes remained trained outside the square gap in the wall behind them, staring intently at the bright glowing squares directly across from us. Korbin clasped my shoulder as I went to walk past, redirecting me to their little circle.
"Now that everyone's here, I get to say this bluntly. You motherfuckers don't listen, you know that?" Korbin said, his pleasant smile dropping quickly into a look of disgust.
"I tried to tell each one of you as you sprinted into battle about this, but NONE of you even stopped to listen. Oh wait, I'm wrong!" Korbin said, hitting my chest with his pointer finger.
"Out of all of you, TOM was the only one patient enough to stop and hear me out. Now you tell me what was wrong with that sentence?!" Korbin angrily barked, earning ashamed low hanging heads from everyone else. Me, I was still staring outside having noticed something block out the lights outside.
"Well, what exactly is this? And where's Phoebe?!" Cassi finally said after a brief pause.
"She won't be here. We only get those who've devoted themselves to Elysium." Korbin answered plainly.
"Why?" Lonni asked. I snuck a few steps around Korbin, heading towards the dark stone walkway illuminated by strips of white light just outside of the viewing area.
"Because that's the faction they've devoted themselves to. Phoebe is a proud member of the Gaia clan, a people who insisted on maintaining independence from our official governance." Korbin said, a tinge of anger leaking in his explanation.
"I don't see everyone from Elysium here, only our soldiers?" Derrick asked faintly behind me.
"Because they aren't warriors. Will you guys just let me explain what's going on here?" Korbin pleaded. My eyes squinted in the distance, until I looked to my left. The exact same walkway outside of another viewing area jutted out of the dark metallic wall about 80 feet from me. Walking to the edge of the walkway, the same viewing areas covered above and below. Some even had humanoid figures moving about them, though their details were completely blurred.
"TOM! I won't say this twice, come h-" Korbin's pleas from behind me were cut short by a sound I hadn't heard in nearly a month. One that became a symbol of so much, my first great failure, brush with death, and catalyst to becoming Perunious's Chosen. All the same, a chill ran down my spine feeling the reverberations echo through my chest.
*TICK*