Mage Tank-Chapter 274: No Dog in This Fight

Captain Pio turned to her crew and started speaking in rapid-fire Imperial. “Baltae, Madel, you’re up,” she said. “Cezil, you’re ride-along.”

The team’s entire demeanor shifted in an instant, and they sprang into action as their captain gave them their orders. Madel and Baltae both started pulling armor and equipment from their inventories while Cezil and Guar moved to help them gear up. Pio turned back to Tavio, standing at attention and giving the major her full focus.

“We have a large feeding party of Silica Swifts coming from the south,” said Tavio, his speaking cadence much quicker in his native tongue. “A thousand, at least. They’ve spotted our hammerhead and are on course to swarm us.”

“My estimate puts us around two hundred miles north of the mountains,” said Pio.

“That is correct,” said Tavio.

“Any idea why the Swifts are so far north?”

“No. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“What’s directly below us?” asked Pio.

Tavio relayed the question to the bird handler up front, who shouted a response after a second. “Speargarden,” said Tavio. “Lieutenant Augustin has directed the hammerhead to start taking us directly southward.”

“Into the feeding party?” asked Pio.

“Yes, but it is the fastest way to get clear of any civilian populations.” He shrugged. “It is not as though we could outrun the Swifts by heading in another direction. That is all for now, Captain.”

Pio gave Tavio a quick nod, then turned back to her team. Baltae now wore a black leather coat that hung to his knees, glimmering with weaves in my mana sight. Under it was a tabard featuring imperial heraldry over a set of chainmail. Madel was head to toe in black leathers. A cape hung down to her calves, dyed the same shade of red that decorated Tavio’s formal uniform. Madel and Baltae both had their faces fully obscured by dark helms, the top half made from rounded Madrin. The lower half was mail, descending from just below their eyes, which were protected by a tinted glassy material.

They looked a lot more intimidating with their equipment on.

The moment Madel had finished donning her helm, Cezil lifted Madel’s cape and placed her hands on her sister’s back. The feisty twin began to melt, her body deforming until she was flattened against the martial fighter and completely obscured by her twin’s backwear.

“Madel, take point and try to clear the hammerhead’s path,” Pio ordered. “Cezil, bedlam strategy; we need to break up the swarm. Baltae, perimeter defense. Stay within fifty feet of our vessel.”

Madel shot forward, streaking out of the Closet portal and into the birdplane. She rapidly undid several locks on the exterior door and slid it aside, releasing a gale of wind into the cabin as she bolted out into the sky. Baltae cast Telekinesis on himself and followed. The mage wasn’t nearly as fast, but he was still quick enough to leave a healthy breeze in his wake.

“Guar, you and I will get up top and protect the hammerhead,” said Pio. “It is a bad fight for us, but we will do what we can.”

“It’s a learning opportunity, Captain,” said Guar, smiling as he pulled pieces of heavy plate from his inventory. Varrin went over and gestured at the armor, drawing a nod and another smile from Guar in return. The big guy immediately started helping the Littan into his gear with a fluid confidence born of deep expertise, enhanced by a shitload of Agility and Speed. Pio’s armor wasn’t nearly as involved, but a deft assist from Nuralie had her outfitted in a handful of seconds.

The captain double-checked the fastenings on Guar’s armor, then slapped him on the back once she was satisfied. The man’s boot made a single loud clunk against the ground as he launched forward, and he was gone nearly as fast as Madel. Pio turned to the rest of us.

“My team should be able to handle this,” she said. “Our parties have not had the opportunity to work together on group tactics, so my people will likely operate better solo for the moment. If things get spicy, we may request your participation.”

“We’ll stay out of your way and keep our eyes open,” I said. Pio nodded, then spun and followed after her group in a blur.

I shared a look with my party, and then we all broke out our own combat regalia. Varrin’s armor simply appeared over his body, while Nuralie stepped out of a shadowy corner, already fully outfitted.

Xim’s newest armor set was made from a material called wyldweave, something that Ishi was happy to sell to us for an outrageous price, which could expand to accommodate the cleric’s transformations. Conveniently, this also allowed it to expand wide enough for her to slide into it and then have it tighten to a snug fit. This let her gear up in about the same length of time it took for Etja to get equipped, whose modified Zng armor had been designed to break open and close around her in a matter of seconds.

As for me, Grotto and I had come up with our own solution. I opened a secondary portal to the armory, revealing my prismatite and demon bone armor. Grotto used Animate Object to bring it to life, and I walked through the portal, allowing the various pieces to slide on and lock themselves in place. As the fastenings secured themselves, I continued walking and opened another portal, bringing me back to where I started. This let me don the full set of heavy plate in the time it took me to casually walk a few steps, but I was betting we could get that down even further.

Six seconds after Pio was gone, my crew walked out to the main body of the bird-plane, fully suited and ready to throw down. Tavio was just sliding the door shut behind his people, and the sound of boots clunking against the top of our craft echoed through the cabin. He looked us over with a raised eyebrow.

“That was fast,” he said. “Master Xor’Drel, you are welcome to join me up front. Apologies, but I do not think there will be room for everyone else.”

“Sure,” I said, monitoring Pio and Guar’s souls through the ceiling while they got into position on either side of the hammerhead. “Also, please feel free to call me Arlo.” ṘåŊОBΕŝ

Tavio smiled and gave me a short bow. “As you wish, Arlo. And there is, of course, no reason for you to refer to me by my rank. Just Tavio is fine for all of you.”

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With that, Tavio turned to move up next to the surly man directing the hammerhead, a Level 3 Copper whose name was apparently Lieutenant Augustin. I’d introduced myself and tried to get his name when I loaded in, but the guy really didn’t seem to want to talk to me. There was only the one seat up front, but Tavio squeezed in on the man’s right. I was a bit too bulky in my armor, so I settled for kneeling just behind and to the lieutenant’s left. There were no windows in the rear cabin, so I used Reveal to start sharing everything I could see with the party.

The entire front of the craft was made of mana-woven glass, even the floor beneath the pilot. His seat was suspended in the middle, small and low profile, to give him a good view. There were no traditional controls, but a thin thread of spiritual mana rose up to connect him to the hammerhead above, while several more stretched out to the various devices around him. I assumed the actual flight controls were handled through a psychic bond, with the hammerhead taking orders.

While there wasn’t anything to steer the vehicle, there was an angled display with an illusory map crawling past, showing the topography below us. Along the windshields, there were a few floating markers with unfamiliar abbreviations next to them. They looked like indicators for direction and important nearby landmarks. There didn’t seem to be anything marking our altitude, making me think that the hammerhead took care of that itself.

There was also a slate mounted to the right of the map, reminiscent of the kind Grotto used and which Hiwardian slates were based on, but this one had its own proprietary Littan flair. It was bulkier than the others I’d seen, and the text ticked by in irregular stutters rather than flowing smoothly downward. All of it was coded, so I had no idea what any of it said. The whole device looked a lot tougher than what the Hiwardians used, and the text’s movement appeared to be based on the pilot’s mana input.

There was another, narrower panel on the map’s left, showing a series of four-letter codes with percentages next to them: STBL 33%, MMTM 33%, PHDR 34%, CHIP 91%. All of the text was in Imperial standard, of course, which was only moderately useful to me in interpreting the military gibberish. I figured the final label referred to how much mana was left in the vessel’s mana chips, and had some ideas for what the others were abbreviations for. I didn’t give it too much thought, figuring I might find out whether I was right soon enough.

My overall impression of the cockpit was that it looked out of place compared to most of what I’d seen around Arzia. There were plenty of things I’d found inside Delves that looked pretty technologically advanced, but this was one of the more impressive examples of magi-tech I’d seen in use outside of a System-run facility. I refrained from commenting on it, since both Tavio and the pilot were wholly focused on what was ahead of us.

I peered out with them to see a mass of souls that was momentarily confusing. They didn’t seem to be attached to anything, like the sky was filled with a swarm of invisible monsters. After a second or two, Madel blasted by, a few hundred feet ahead of us, swinging weapons fast enough to create audible snaps through the air. Each strike used a new armament, and each hit was accompanied by a dagger that shot out to pierce an unseen target. As she did her flyby, the air was filled with glittering fragments of falling crystal.

I then realized that the creatures were entirely transparent. I focused until I could see the warped outlines of the Silica Swifts, creating a barely visible distortion in the air as a large group of them swung around to follow after Madel. Despite the Littan soaring through the air at several hundred miles per hour, the creatures in her wake were able to keep up, and even gain on the woman.

The name of these mana monsters suddenly made a lot of sense, and a quick identify told me more about what we were dealing with.

Silica Swift: Avian, Grade 10

I frowned and scanned a few more of the nearly invisible birds, seeing that their grades mostly ranged from five to eleven, although I spotted one that was grade thirteen. That was alarming for a few reasons.

While a flock of enemies this powerful wouldn’t be out of place within a Delve, there was rarely enough mana to sustain higher-grade creatures on the surface. A team of low-level Delvers would be needed to handle a small handful of the weaker grades that I saw, and this number of birds wouldn’t fit in anybody’s hand, unless it was the size of a container ship. In fact, Tavio’s estimate of a thousand seemed a little light.

Based on the brief exchange between Tavio and Pio, it didn’t sound like they’d thought a group this large was unusual. What was extraordinary was how far they’d traveled outside of their normal habitat. The southern Littan mountains sat about fifty miles north of the border to the Forest, creating a natural barrier between the empire and the monster-infested wildlands. For whatever reason, the Silica Swifts had decided to range farther north, despite the lower mana density.

The reason this was odd was that mana monsters needed mana to live, and migrating to a lower density region would cause them to slowly starve. Most could sustain themselves on ambient mana alone, but when there wasn’t enough in the environment, they went looking for it in other places. Between our hammerhead, which was itself a graded creature, and our tin can full of Delvers, we probably looked like a pretty tasty snack.

That was lucky for the civilians below us, since one of these Swifts could probably chow down on an entire city full of mundane people and what meager mana their bodies had to offer; people who could do nothing to stop them. It was simultaneously unlucky for the birds, since they were probably about to choke on their Delver entrée.

Again, I kept my commentary to myself so the Littans could focus. Madel did several more loops around in front of us, shattering a score of birds with each pass as she dodged and teleported around dozens more that tried to skewer her with long, narrow beaks. She trailed another hundred of the Swifts behind her, but it was less than a tenth of the enemy. That left more than a thousand for the rest of her team to intercept as they screamed towards our hammerhead.

The lead birds were less than a second from intercept when a swell of Dimensional mana filled the air ahead of us.

“Dive,” Tavio ordered.

Our vessel angled down fast enough to send us into free fall, barely avoiding the vanguard of Swifts that blasted through our position. Several adjusted course to plummet in time with us, when Baltae’s Suction Bomb imploded amidst the birds. Space warped in on itself and yanked our pursuers backwards, crushing dozens of the Swifts into the spell’s center and shattering their glassy bodies.

We kept diving, the hammerhead propelling us faster towards the ground until I was forced to grip a strut to keep from falling up, which was now the back of the vessel where my portal was. That was pretty wild, considering the vessel had mana weaves to counteract those kinds of forces. The majority of the horde broke around Baltae’s AoE and followed us down, closing the distance with ease.

A series of golden hammers shot up into the sky as Guar unleashed blessed copies of his weapon. The blunt instrument shattered the creatures like a sledgehammer through delicate ice sculptures, each projectile breaking through to the birds behind. Even so, the Swifts parted to let the hammers pass, losing no more than a few to each throw.

While the pack trailing us filled the sky with their soul halos, nearly half of the birds had remained high above, moving in chaotic spirals around one another. As I watched, one Swift’s life was snuffed out, that section of the swarm reoriented itself on us, then quickly halted to start attacking another of their number. Cezil was rapid-firing berserk spells, and while she wasn’t netting a lot of kills with the maneuver, she was keeping a huge fraction of the feeding party tied up while they fought their own turncoat members.

“Momentum weave’s too much of a drain,” said Lieutenant Augustin. “Killing it.” The pilot reached out to the left side display and flicked open a panel next to MMTM. I glanced at the readout next to CHIP and saw that it had dropped to 78%.

Tavio turned and shouted, “Prepare for the floor to give you a hug!”

Lieutenant Augustin yanked a metallic cylinder out from behind the panel, the percentage next to MMTM dropped to zero, and the weaves keeping us safe from most of the G-forces disappeared.

Then the hammerhead pulled up.