Zoe was the first to find herself at the back of the tent and sat down on quite an uncomfortable wrought iron bench. Whoever made the bench formed it too close to the back of the tent, so Zoe found herself leaning forward to avoid the constant slapping of the tent’s fabric against the back of her neck.
Another older woman was the next to show up and stood hunched over next to Zoe, leaning on a gnarled wooden cane for support. “Good luck out there deary.” The woman said.
“You too,” Zoe said.
The two women sat in silence for a few minutes before the third member of their little group showed up. A younger man, looking to be in his mid thirties sauntered back to them with a feeling of confidence and pride that was completely out of place for the rest of the tent.
“You ready for this, girls? Gonna be a blast, huh?" He summoned a small wooden stool that he sat on.
Zoe shook her head and did her best to ignore him as he rambled about how incredible his healing was and how as soon as he got out onto the front lines, the darkness would be dealt with forever. If it were as simple as he seemed to think it would be, Zoe would be ecstatic. But if it were so simple, it would have been dealt with already.
Part of Zoe expected him to show up on the front lines and die a painful death, unaware of the dangers that it could truly pose. If they were letting somebody like him in, then they must truly be desperate, Zoe imagined. She thought back to Foizo, to Emma and Joe and the fear they must be feeling. Was this darkness localized here, at the capital? Or was it spreading elsewhere, as well. Would they be okay?
Should she leave, flee back to Foizo and take everybody to the dungeon on the moon? Zoe sighed and summoned a notebook, forming a wooden pencil she enchanted with Bearer of Ink and wrote a note.
Hey Emma, it’s Zoe. Just checking on you. Things are not looking great here in the capital, honestly. It’s much worse than when we left. Hope everything’s still fine back in Foizo.
Mana rushed around the note, ripping it from Zoe’s hand as she let out a sigh of relief. If her skill couldn’t activate, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. And even knowing Emma was alive did so little for her anxiety. What if she was alive, but fighting off the corruption that seeped into her soul? What if she were dying when Zoe sent the note and had taken her last breath since then?
Zoe took a few deep breaths as she tried to calm herself down. Emma was fine. Joe was fine. Peter and Lauren were fine. Foizo was fine. The capital was attacked, there was no indication of anything going wrong back at Foizo when she was there.
But as soon as this was done, Zoe was going to make it her priority to get both Emma and Joe the sending skill. Even if it took forty years to get it through their thick skulls, she would make it happen. One way communication just wasn’t good enough in a real crisis, even if it was more than adequate for a peaceful day to day life.
The fourth member of their group showed up a few minutes later. A younger, nervous looking woman along with a royal guard in a flowing purple gown who had a heavy looking iron staff hanging from his back.
“You four ready?” The guard asked as they approached.
Zoe and the older woman nodded.
“Damn straight, lets get out there already!” The obnoxious young man laughed.
The nervous woman at the guard’s side nodded her head. “I suppose,” she said in a whisper like voice.
“Excellent.” The guard said. A pulse of mana washed out from them, covering the group and a moment later, Zoe’s vision shifted as they were teleported up to the top of the southern wall.
In front of Zoe was the sprawling darkness, splattering up against the wall with flashes of magic battering every drip of the disgusting corruption that threatened to creep over the wall back. The smell was intense, smashing into Zoe’s nostrils like she’d just been dropped into a dump full of burnt hair and rotting flesh. And the noise was almost painful.
Screeches echoed from the darkness as countless creatures rampaged, lashing out at the ground and trees, tearing up the bushes and hurling bits of themselves at the defenders surrounding the darkness. The noise from the top of the wall was hardly different, with the swarm of people screaming out orders and explosions of magic rattling through the air.
“Four more healers,” the purple robed guard said to another guard standing next to where Zoe’s group arrived before they vanished again in a pulse of magic.
“You,” the guard said to the group. The guard’s chainmail rattled against the metal sword he held at his waist. “Show me your tokens.”
The three people Zoe was with held out different colours of metal squares. The older woman and the younger woman had red squares, the young man had a green square and Zoe had her silver square.
“Excellent.” The guard said, turning around and eyeing through the crowd of people on the wall. “Carolyn!” He called out to a woman running around carrying vials of liquid from person to person. “Take these two reds to the hospital.”
“Yes sir!” Carolyn bowed and grabbed the two women, leading them down some steps on the side of the wall.
“You,” The guard pointed at the man with the green square and then back at a group of mages hurtling magic down the wall at the ever growing sea of darkness below them. “You’re back with them.”
“Sick.” The man said, rushing off to join the group.
“And you,” the guard said to Zoe. “You’re with me. How much mana do you have?"
“Uh, maximum or regeneration?" Zoe asked.
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“How much is your maximum mana, and how long does it take you to regenerate it completely?” The guard clarified as they started walking off along the wall.
“I have almost thirteen million mana and it takes a little under a second to regenerate it completely.” Zoe said, following behind them.
The guards eyebrows lifted. “Excellent. And your healing capabilities are equally competent?”
Zoe shook her head. “I can’t really use the full extent of my mana on healing. If you give me a single injured person, I’m confident I can keep them alive but a group of them I don’t know. I do have some area healing but honestly it’s probably better used for empowering people more than healing them.”
The guard nodded. “I’m sure Liberto will find something to do with you, then.”
Zoe followed the guard along the wall for a few minutes, past several more groups of mages hurtling magic down the wall and others with enormous amounts of mana swirling around them as they seemed to work together to cast far more powerful magic down at the corruption. Dozens of people ran around carrying bags, handing out vials of different colours of liquids to the various groups, others ran around carrying platters full of food and drinks.
Many folk sat on rather comfortable looking chairs, with dim lights of varying colours pulsing out from them, filling the rest of the people with various effects. The number of system messages Zoe got as the guard led her down the wall was incredible, as she crossed through aura after aura. Resistances, healing, regeneration, magical power. The variety of effects was amazing to see, and in any other situation Zoe would have loved to sit back and study all of the skills on display.
The guard eventually led Zoe down some steps on the side of the wall and into a large room made of what seemed like entirely glass. Mana pulsed through the walls as explosions rattled the outside and a few people sat in the middle with an enormous amount of mana rushing from them and filling the floor. It was the first time Zoe saw an amount of mana that could compare to what she had now, and let alone compare with it, the people on the floor made her feel like a child baseball prodigy trying to hold their own in the major leagues. It was breathtaking to see — and somehow still not enough, she realized.
“Liberto!" The guard called out as they entered.
One of the men sitting on the floor opened their eyes and looked up at Zoe and the guard.
The guard Zoe was with nodded. “Twelve million and just as much per second. Acceptable healing and an empowering aura. Put her to good use.” The guard turned to Zoe as they stepped back out of the room. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, you too.” Zoe said to them as they ran off.
Liberto stood up off the floor in a steady motion, their breaths unwavering as the flood of mana pouring into the floor from their form didn’t cease. A massive black ball appeared next to them about waist high, along with the slightest fluctuation in the mana pouring from their form and they rolled it across the floor to Zoe.
“Take this and sit up top on the wall.” They said in a slow, careful voice. “Prioritize your aura and healing anybody you see. Any excess mana, pour into this. Every thirty minutes, or when it is filled, bring it back to me. Understand?”
Zoe nodded and grabbed the black ball. With just her hands, the ball was impossible to lift, she found. Even with all of her physical gains lately, it was just far too heavy for her to pick it up off the ground. She gave up and formed an earthen cradle beneath it, lifting it and carrying it back up the stairs to the top of the wall as Liberto sat back down on the floor, closing his eyes.
When she got to the top, Zoe saw a group of mages just a few short steps away and formed a chair behind them, floating just off the edge of the wall with the black sphere below her. She pushed as much mana as she could into her Life’s Respite and Life’s Embrace skills, bolstering and healing the people near her. Most of them jolted as they got the notification and noticed their improved speed. A couple of them glanced back at Zoe and nodded.
Some of the rest of Zoe’s mana was put into Restoration to heal back the health she was losing to Life’s Respite, though she found she didn’t need to do that much. With her massive pool of health and all of her regeneration bonuses, Zoe’s health was almost sustaining itself despite pouring her health into the people around her. And then the remainder of her mana, Zoe flooded into the infinite void that was the black sphere beneath her.
As she sat, focusing on all of her skills working in tandem, she started trying to work in Meditation as she went. It had been years — decades even, since she last needed to use the skill for anything. At one point it was her highest level skill by far, and then she’d outgrown it. What was the difference between fifteen million mana every second and fifty million mana every second? Either way, most often the limiting factor was how quick she could process things.
But right now, the limiting factor was her mana, and her mana alone. Getting all of her skills to work at the same time, while she also let the world around her fade away was a very difficult challenge she hadn’t needed to work on in far too long.
The first thirty minutes passed, and Zoe brought the black sphere back down to Liberto. She rolled it across the floor and with a slight pulse of mana, Liberto ripped all of the mana she’d managed to store in it out and flood it into the glass room in a flash of blinding light. He rolled it back, and Zoe made her way back to the group she’d been sitting with to try and find her meditative trance again.
It took several hours before she began finding any success with her attempts, managing to slip into Meditation for brief moments at a time without lapsing on the rest of her skills. She almost started to think she was making a difference, too. With the wall seeming to hold up better against the barrage of darkness below and the commotion feeling less overwhelming to her.
But how much of that was because of her assistance, and how much of that was because of the other recruits who were being brought up every few minutes, Zoe wasn’t sure. And maybe it just felt more routine because she’d grown used to it. The flashes of magic battering back the darkness seeming less like something to be afraid of and more just a part of normal life.
“HEALER!” Zoe’s meditative trance was broken by a shout to her left. “HEALER!” They shouted again.
Zoe looked at the source of the voice and saw a person clawing at their face, the corrupting darkness covering their face and hands, dripping from their hand and creeping down their arms. Three mages stood a few feet away from them, blasting pulses of light at the darkness that sloshed against the floor.
She Cosmic Leaped over and pressed her hand into the wounded’s back, flooding her Restoration into them. “You!” She shouted at the mages. “Can you get the darkness off of them? I can heal them, but I can’t kill the darkness.”
The mages nodded and pulses of light began washing over the wounded person’s body, turning the oozing blackness to shadowy dust that scattered against the floor leaving odd looking splotches of shadows in their wake.
“Thank you.” He said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Zoe nodded.
“BREACH!” Another shout resounded from the group still firing their magic down the wall, and a moment later an oozing black paw reached over the wall, splattering darkness on the floor that people managed to avoid.
A bear clambered up over the wall’s edge, dripping with darkness and radiating hunger and anger to Zoe’s empathy. Zoe Identified it before a blast of earth knocked it back down the wall. A level two hundred seventy eight dark red Corrupted Bear and Zoe shuddered as she remembered what the darkness reminded her of. It seemed almost identical to the Corrupted Okiu she’d been blessed by so many decades ago — but this time it seemed to sustain itself somehow. Was the Okiu stopping the corruption? Or was this somehow an improved version of it?
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