Apocalypse: Regression

“We can’t let him die!” Nick shouted as he threw his spear right at the large ursine thirty feet away, following up the spear attack with a burst of holy fire as his rage, his anger at the sight of a monster about to kill the people he had come to save, manifested in the form of a blazing pillar that landed right on the creature.

The sudden assault caused the monster to turn its head toward Nick just in time to catch the Weight of Dedication right in the skull. Only, between the hard bone armor the bear was wearing, and its own naturally tough skull, the spear barely dug an inch in before getting stuck in the bear’s head, lodged firmly in place.

The bear, snarling and angry, took another round of holy fire that it seemed to completely shrug off as Elizabeth, Seo-ah, and Mr. Walters hit it with pillars of righteous flame. At the same time, Adele, in full battle cleric mode, started a mad sprint toward the fallen knight. Nick had expected the barrage of powerful holy magic to cripple or seriously wound the monster, but not only had it failed to do that, it hadn’t even damaged its heavy rock-fur.

“Freaking fire resistance,” Nick grumbled as he squinted at the beast. He knew that Artic Ursines had 50% fire resistance and 80% piercing resistance, but he had hoped there was enough firepower to overcome the resistance. It left him wondering if the armor was adding any additional resistance to piercing and fire, so that maybe he could understand why the monster would be so tough. Especially since the only base weaknesses ursine bears had were acid and bludgeoning damage. “Alright, we need to get close and do some good bludgeoning damage!”

“Already on it!” Mr. Walters called back as he ran forward with Adele, easily outpacing her and punching a dire wolf in the face as the two pushed into the line of knights. The bear, patting down the scorching flames that still clung to its body, turned its attention back to the knight captain, hungry to finish off the prey it had been taunting moments ago.

Mr. Walters was just in time to block one of the hits with his signature move, his large hexagonal shield. The monster’s heavy axe struck the barrier, coming to a complete stop as the blade exploded from the bear’s own aura that was covering his weapon, shattering the shield with a burst of light.

As Mr. Walters protected the knight captain, Adele moved to the man’s side and healed the wound as fast as she could.

“Armoring!” yelled Reggie from the back of the group as everyone charged forward. Every human on the battlefield was covered in the orange glowing effect of his skill, the skill that would block or stop exactly one hit from any source.

“I’ve never been so happy to have a blacksmith in my party,” Seo-ah commented as the light from the armoring skill covered her from head to toe.

“Careful, there are far more wolves than needed to surround the knights. We’re going to be wading into the thick of it,” Nick warned as the group began to push forward, his standard of Greatness in hand, trying to judge how close he’d need to be in order to buff his entire team with the standard’s power.

Use Cloak of Madness! Do not let my people die! the Black Witch urged him as he pushed forward. Without hesitating this time, he shouted a command, lacing it with charisma as he activated the skill. “Do not be afraid! We will triumph! Wolves and harpies are cowardly beasts that nip at heels and claw at your back! If you hold tight to your courage and do not let your fear overtake you, then you will find victory easily!”

The words had no sooner left his mouth than the aura from Cloak of Madness spread out, engulfing his allies. He wondered for half a second if it would work on the knights, but that question didn’t have to linger long in his mind as he saw the effect: their weapons began to move faster, as if their whole bodies had been rejuvenated, and their backs straightened. They instantly seemed more confident like they knew they would survive. For a brief moment, they all looked to Nick, their wordless gazes telling Nick that they’d follow him anywhere.

With that the whole group broke into battle as they finally reached the enemy ranks. Topaz shot out two red canisters from her multi-barrel grenade launcher at the knights, who bore clear injuries from battling against the harpies and wolves, as everyone charged forward. The canisters covered them in a red goo as they exploded above them. “Healing goodness,” she explained as Nick gave her a sideway glance. She then loaded and fired a special canister into the air.

This canister soared high above the knights toward the circling harpies and then exploded, creating a smoky gray cloud that expanded rapidly in all directions. As that was going on, Allen used his drone’s infrared abilities to target the harpies in the cloud and ram into them, ViVi electrifying them and sending more than one harpy to the ground. Once the cloud filled the sky, Nick couldn’t see what was happening in the aerial battle, but he could hear coughing and saw a few feathers fall to the ground. Whatever Topaz used must have been tear gas or something similar.

Mr. Walters, who had previously been the front line, fighting off the large bear, was joined by Nick, Elizabeth, and Seo-ah, who engaged the massive wolves while Mr. Walters continued to focus on the hulking axe bear. The wolves’ size was more than a little intimidating to Nick as he ran into the battle, part of him wishing that Cloak of Madness gave him the same courage as the others. He went to jam his standard through one of the large wolves they were flanking, but he didn’t even reach the monster before Seo-ah had already unleashed her Hwatu Spear Burst skill, the aura created glowing phantom spears that exploded outward and sliced into the monster.

Nick adjusted the angle of his attack, capitalizing on the now-exposed open wound, digging his standard into the large white-furred wolf’s gaping wound as he finished off the monster with a powerful Straight Thrust.

He pulled the standard back, intending to find another foe, but felt something suddenly yank strongly at the standard. A wolf had darted in and snapped the flag end and was trying to disarm him.

“Nick!” Seo-ah called out as she dispatched another dire wolf only to immediately start holding off two more. “They're trying to surround us!”

“Then we don't let them!” he shouted back, his sandaled foot smashing the skull of the wolf pulling on his standard.

A few harpies dove down out of the gas cloud overhead and spotted Nick and Seo-ah, swooping toward them. Nick yanked the flag of his standard from the mouth of the wolf and lashed out with the tip, clipping the wing of a harpy and sending it spiraling into the snow.

Pulling the standard back, he prepared to go for another kill. “Seo-ah, cover—”

Suddenly, a gust of wind struck Nick in the face. He barely got a chance to look up before his entire field of vision was surrounded by a flurry of feathers, the flapping wings and loud screeching adding to the sensory overload as he struggled to focus on the fight. The harpy slashed his new armor with its talons, the metal shrieking under the assault, but the beast failed to pierce Reggie’s handiwork.

Nick stabbed upward with his weapon, but the harpy’s claws gripped tightly to the edge where his shoulder pauldron met his cuirass as another harpy appeared, latching on as well. Even as he killed one of the feathered fliers, two more came, and before he knew it, three of them had managed to grab hold of him and flap their wings hard enough to nearly lift him into the air.

Nick thrashed against the pull of the harpies, his sandals barely scraping the snow as he desperately tried to stop them from taking him airborne, but he was inevitably hoisted upward. His stomach turned, panic filling his mind for a moment as he was lifted higher and higher until his friends looked like small children below him. He was so high that he feared he might not survive the fall if he was dropped.

“Damn it, not now,” he grunted. His grip on the Standard of Greatness was slipping as the wild wind blew around him, the banner that symbolized their hope fluttering wildly in the wind.

Suddenly, a streak of purple energy cut the air. Elizabeth had kicked off the top of two harpies, one after the other as she soared toward him. A moment later, her sword pierced the sky, splitting across the horizon with an otherworldly light as it found its mark in the belly of one harpies, the chest of one, and the neck of the other. There was a burst of purple aura, and the harpies’ triumphant screeches turned into death wails as they were blasted apart and released Nick.

“Got you!” Elizabeth shouted, her voice a mix of relief and determination as she flew toward him.

“Elizabeth!” Nick called out, feeling the sudden drop. His descent accelerated as the ground began to rush up to meet him.

“I said I had you!” Elizabeth repeated, sounding a little frustrated as she smashed into him. A moment later, the muscled woman had pulled something out of her inventory. It was like a small, magical parachute that shot up five feet above her before turning into something three times as large as an umbrella with little jets on each side of it as it controlled their descent down.

“What is . . .” Nick didn’t even finish his question as he gestured upward with his head at the device.

“I had Allen whip this up this morning because of what happened last night,” Elizabeth explained, reminding him of the dragonkin that had almost murdered her by dropping her to her death in the fight to reclaim the city.

Oh, yeah,” Nick replied and then looked down at the fight below.

“This makes us even,” Elizabeth said, holding him tight against her chest with one arm as the other gripped onto the mechanical parachute. “But thanks again for saving me then.”

Nick just nodded back.

The warm moment was short lived as they landed in a high snow bank just north of the fight, their landing sending up enough snow to cushion their fall. Nick pushed his way through the bank and surveyed the battlefield. He then charged back to the battlefield, standard in hand, noting that the tide of battle was already turning. Bodies of wolves and harpies lay strewn across the snow, their numbers dwindling rapidly under the relentless assault of Nick's group and the now-rejuvenated knights. Yet, even with their progress, there was one monstrous figure that still loomed large amidst the carnage: the heavily armored bear, unleashing wide, aura-filled swipes that prevented it from getting surrounded even as the knights continued to free themselves from their encircled position.

Mr. Walters was still meeting the huge beast head-on, each shield he created shattering under a single heavy blow from the axe, but he moved and dodged to shift where the axe would land to make sure there would always be a fresh shield there. Reggie had managed to take position beside him, moving with the speed and dexterity of a former high school state dueling champion. His zweihänder glowed orange from his armoring spell as he stepped forward, parrying a blow before it could shatter another one of Mr. Walter’s hexagonal shields, only to retreat behind a shield himself as he prepared another cast of his defensive spell.

“Dad!” Elizabeth exclaimed, her eyes locking onto the scene.

“Hang in there, Reggie! Don’t you dare get hurt before I save you!” Nick could hear Christina yelling. He turned to see her finishing off a pack of the large dire wolves with three knights.

Nick didn’t have faith that she’d reach Mr. Walters and Reggie in time, so he used Charge to get across the battlefield as fast as he could.

“Let's go!” Nick commanded, his voice cutting through the growls and snarls. He knew Mr. Walters and Reggie were holding up well, for now, but that the two would run out of mana and aura before the monster ran out of stamina. “We have to reach it now!”

“Nick, that thing can cut through armor like butter! Be careful!” Seo-ah yelled from behind him as he tore across the snow.

It didn’t take more than a second for Nick to reach the bear. He threw his standard into the ground as he jumped into the air while running. He used his Sandals of Hermes to double jump, climbing into the sky as he launched himself straight at the monster. To Nick’s advantage, the large ursine was so focused on Mr. Walters that it didn’t seem to notice Nick’s ascent. Nick grabbed onto the Weight of Dedication, which was still stuck in the ursine’s head, yanking as hard as he could on the spear to stop himself from flying right past the monster.

The bear let out a loud roar, but Nick just ignored it as he planted his feet on the bear’s forehead, holding on as tight as possible as the bear shook its head left and right to try to dislodge him.

“He’s not your only problem!” Nick could hear Arnold yell as he struck the beast in the side with the Maul of Afterburn.

As the monster turned to strike at Arnold, Nick nearly lost his footing, but he planted each foot into one of the bear’s eyes to cut out the beast’s vision while stabilizing himself with the spear. With Reggie’s orange armor spell covering him, he lifted up his fist, miming smashing it down like a hammer onto the top of the Weight of Dedication.

Nick shouted to Arnold, “Hit it hard, John Henry style!” He then stabilized the swinging end of the spear as best he could. Nick heard the roar from behind him and saw Arnold’s shadow as the maul head came down hard on the end of the Weight of Dedication. The moment Nick felt the impact of the heavy maul on his spear, he increased the weight of his weapon to its maximum capacity, the added weight magnifying the blow. The spear tip pushed through the monster’s skull like a jackhammer, splitting its cranium like an egg. The monster’s brain splattered under the blow as the bear’s skull, now cracked down the sides, popped open.

With the monster dead, Nick turned to find the wounded knight captain they had rushed to save. Adele, her hands glowing with a soft light, knelt beside the injured commander. Even after being healed for several minutes, the man's arm lay a foot away, sheared clean off, the bone jutting from the stump through torn flesh and fabric. She was doing her best to heal him as she whispered a prayer under her breath, repeating it like a chant and focusing on her task despite the chaos around her.

While she was healing him, the wound slowly stabilizing, one of the knights, seemingly unfazed by the commander’s dire state, walked over to where the other half of the commander’s arm had been flung and picked it up. He then roughly smashed bone against bone as he stuck the ends of the arm together, the pain waking the commander from his unconscious state.

The moment the man’s mouth opened to scream, another one of the soldiers shoved a red potion in it. The effects were unlike anything Nick or the others had ever seen before. It only took a moment for a radiant energy to fill the commander’s body, and then strips of flesh and sinew reached out and began to heal the wound instantly. The severed arm reattached, the open wound in his side closed, and in just a minute, as everyone watched on in amazement, the man was fully healed, not even a scar left behind. Nick and the others continued to stare in disbelief at the potion.

Then, as if things couldn’t be stranger, the knights all took a knee, facing Nick in a kneeling position as if they were kneeling in front of a king they had unwavering respect and faith in. It caused the others to turn to Nick in confusion.

“How do they know you’re the one paying the bills?” Reggie asked as he helped Nick pick his Standard of Greatness off the ground, handing it over.

You used my magic. You wielded the power I gave you. Naturally, they think you are my proxy, my avatar, the Black Witch explained in his mind.

Nick realized that, now more than ever, he was close to meeting the woman who had saved his life, given him the power to protect his people, and led him to this cold, forsaken land.