Chapter 735: POV Prodigy

“Oh! That was definitely a very Syd-like thing to do!”

Sabina exclaimed her thoughts out loud, though there was no one nearby to hear them. Well, maybe Maeve could hear her, or if one of the therions from Kerr’s clan happened to be inside the cabin at that moment, then maybe they’d hear her, but she was alone at the pilot’s seat of the Leviathan at the moment so really there wasn’t anyone for her to talk to. Probably it was just her nerves expressing themselves once again, making her chatter along like a squirrel even when there was no one around to listen to her. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew it wasn’t the best habit in the world to have. Talking made her feel better, and right at that moment, she really wanted to feel better.

Ever since the battle had started, Sabina had been using the vision screen that she had installed inside the Leviathan’s pilot cabin to keep a watch on all of her friends. Voyeuristically observing from overhead was all that she could do, or even had to do, since there wasn’t a lot of wind that morning. Sabina only had to make light adjustments to the propeller speeds, occasionally guiding the airship a little bit further forward when it drifted too far back due to the eastern wind pushing them back. Other than those few moments when she needed to touch the controls, there wasn’t anything for Sabina to do with her hands, which wasn’t a situation she liked to be in. Not that she wanted to abandon her post to go work on a project in her temporary workshop, nor would she want to distract herself by bringing something up to the pilot’s seat. Still, Sabina hated not having something to do. Something other than watching, that was.

Sabina had seen the moment when Jay had been struck by the lightning and all three of Jadis had gone down into the water. She had been worried when she didn’t come back up out of the sea right away, and even more anxious when she did come up and she was dragging a giant essence leech with her. The Demon was very likely the Essence Leech Matriarch and was most certainly the one that Jadis and Alex had fought before, when Alex had gained the level that she had needed to reach CLR sixty. Alex had been detailed in her description of the terrible monster. Well, not right away, since they were all a lot more preoccupied with Alex’s tertiary class at the time, but afterwards she had given an extensive description of the giant leech.

It had become a little challenging for her to keep track of which Jadis was which after that point. Jadis kept disappearing under the water, and then behind the city walls, all while fighting the Leech Matriarch and the many smaller essence leeches that came with her. And the other Demons. And a possessed priestess.

Was she a priestess? Probably a priestess. Sabina’s vision screen could only focus so far, and the obviously possessed woman that was being carried around in the mouth of the giant leech appeared to be casting Divine magic. It was possible that she was a cultist who had been possessed by a Demon, but Sabina imagined that if Kerr were in the seat next to her at that moment, she would bet on the woman being a priestess, and Kerr was usually right about those sorts of judgement calls. Either way, with how Jadis and the giant leech kept bouncing all over the place, Sabina had had a hard time keeping up with them.

Wilhelm had gone to help Jadis, which had been very nice of him, though it hadn’t worked out. When he had flown close to the city, the focus points on top of the demonically crafted domes had cast all sorts of powerful lighting-based arcane spells at the Hero, forcing him to evade or risk being knocked out of the sky like Jadis had been. When Jadis and the giant leech had burst through the city wall and broken that one dome in their fighting, Wilhelm had managed to get close enough to at least partially disable the next dome along the line, which had been a big help. Then the giant invisible centipede thing had attacked and Wilhelm had been forced to deal with that.

Sabina wasn’t really sure what the Demon was. After all, it was invisible. She couldn’t see it. But she could see the way the environment moved when it moved and also the way Wilhelm interacted with the monster, so she was pretty sure it was a giant centipede. Maybe a snake. But it had hands, since it was grabbing things with those hands, so centipede seemed more likely. Then again, Demons did all sorts of strange things with their bodies. Alex had two sets of arms and hands and she wasn’t a centipede. She wasn’t a snake, either, so that didn’t prove much, other than Demons seemed to add extra parts onto existing designs. So really, the invisible Demon could have been anything at all, just with lots and lots of extra parts added on.

“Hey! Sabby! What’s happening on the battlefield right now? I’m getting all kinds of crazy reports!”

Sabina blinked her thoughts away as Maeve called out her question to her. She’d gotten a little lost in her mind for a moment. Sure, she wasn’t doing much, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be paying attention.

“Jadis is fighting a possessed priestess and a giant essence leech that is probably a Demon Matriarch on the beach while Noll, Bridget, Aila, Thea, Meli, Rein, and Halvor are attacking the Demon dome that Jadis damaged when she and the probable Demon Matriarch knocked over a section of the city wall, and I think that they’ll probably attack the other dome that’s nearby because Wilhelm damaged that one too before a giant invisible centipede attacked him and right now he’s on the other side of the city fighting the invisible thing that I think is a centipede but it’s hard to tell because it’s invisible and also on the other side of Kastoria so all the buildings are getting in the way, and also Severina is fighting a possessed Seraphim that I think someone said used to be called Vitus but he’s possessed now so maybe not, and Noct is trying to help Severina but she’s not as fast as Sev and the possessed Seraphim so she can’t keep up, and also she’s fighting the biggest wyvern I’ve ever seen right now anyway so she’s kind of distracted!”

Sabina paused to think about what she had just said. Had that been a good recap of everything going on? Maybe. She hadn’t mentioned what Eir, Kerr, Sorcha, and Ammy had been doing, but they were safely inside the main formation of defenders, so she didn’t think Maeve would be getting any weird reports about them. Actually, the weird reports were probably coming from them, since Sorcha had one of the communication devices that she had crafted. Maybe one of them had done something strange while inside of the formation and that was the cause of Maeve’s confusion?

“Okay, thanks!”

Oh. It seemed that she had given a good enough explanation for Maeve to understand.

Good!

Returning her full attention to the continuing battle, Sabina started to focus the vision screen onto Jadis and the large slug Demon she was fighting. However, when she passed her hands over the controls, she saw that small group being led by Noll had just reached the partially collapsed dome. Sabina wanted to keep watching Jadis’ fight, but the angle wasn’t very good and half of what her Nephilim wife was doing to fight the Leech Matriarch wasn’t visible to her thanks to the sea cliffs. However, the view of her other wives, that was to say Meli, Aila, and Thea, was good.

The group spread out, with Noll going left with Bridget on a string, while Rein and Halvor went right. Meli in her half-spider form didn’t follow either pair, and instead started speeding around in rapid ziggy-zaggy motions in front of the city wall. It was kind of funny to watch, with Aila and Thea clutching onto the Dryad’s back like baby smatterlings on their mother, but it wasn’t funny at all when Sabina was reminded of the danger. Bolts of lightning still shot out from the broken focusing point on the top of the dome, nearly hitting Meli. While the power of the magic was obviously weakened and the targeting was inaccurate, the magic attacks still caused the ground to burn and rocks to burst like melons wherever they landed.

There had to be multiple enchantments working in conjunction for there to still be partial efficacy when the overall structure of the enchanted device was damaged. It was the only explanation, as any damage that would be enough to cause the disruption of a magic current in a single rune pattern would just cause the whole thing to stop functioning completely, not just get weaker. The fact that the maker of the domes had managed to get multiple different enchantments that were all doing the same thing to work together with such uniformity, while also making them separate enough that they could continue to operate even when partially disabled, was evidence of a true master of the craft. Sabina hadn’t been able to get too much out of studying the wrecked remains of the last few domes that she had studied since they had been almost completely obliterated by the efforts of Jadis and the others, but she had some hope that once they had defeated the Demons holding Kastoria that she would have some intact samples to examine.

As Aila’s newly earned arcanist spell formed over the top of the dome, Sabina concluded that this particular focus point was not going to be one of those samples.

A transparent white pillar of arcane energy formed in the sky, gaining both speed and solidity as it fell. The construct was crystalline in appearance, with a thick top and a long, roughly hexagonal structure that had uneven edges and sides that all came down to a sharp point at the bottom, as though it were some sort of titanic gemstone tower that had been pulled straight from Metethys’ moonlit realm. Sabina estimated that the object was twenty-one feet tall based on how it compared to the dome it was rapidly approaching, though she would need a closer look for a truly accurate measurement. When the pillar struck the bronze top of the damaged dome, it looked like it had been moving at about the same speed as one of Aila’s force bolts flew, which was relatively fast when compared to most magic projectiles.

Sabina couldn’t feel the impact. Not literally. That would be impossible, of course, since she was sitting inside of an airship a very long distance away from the point of contact and vibrations wouldn’t carry through the sky like that. Yet, Sabina felt as though she should have been able to feel the impact. The way the titanic arcane crystal smashed down onto the metallic hexagon was something spectacular, especially with how the lightning and other magic effects exploded off of the spell, causing a visually awe-inspiring display of expanding debris.

After a few moments, the pillar that Aila had called down was gone, disappeared into whatever place magic went when it was no longer needed, and so too was the focus point on top of the dome gone.

“The spell description really doesn’t do that spell justice!” Sabina commented, again talking to herself, since she didn’t have anyone else to talk to.

The really nice thing about the spell, as Sabina recalled, was not just how big or powerful that it was, but that it was modifiable, just like all the rest of Aila’s wonderful spells.

A second huge crystalline pillar of arcane force appeared in the sky overhead before plunging down like a dagger sent from the gods. When the spell hit the dark opening in the top of the otherwise magically impervious dome, Sabina could see a dark gooey substance rising up to meet it, a product of the Demons inside who were there to protect the function of the shell. The goo didn’t do much to hold Aila’s spell back, though, as it simply fell deep into the hole, sending black slime splashing outward as it buried itself inside of the shell.

One second passed. Then another.

Then, before Sabina could reach the count of three…

A soundless explosion blasted chunks of Demon and slime and every other sort of unidentifiable nastiness out of the large fissure that Jadis had carved into the side of the partially collapsed dome. It was a geyser of destruction, an insane amount of force that made Sabina’s own attempts at enchanted explosions look like children’s toys by comparison. Dark ichor and debris flew for hundreds of yards, out across the cliff and beach and all the way into the sea. The only kind of force Sabina could think of to match the exhibition of power was the breath of a dragon.

“All that for just four hundred magic points…”

Well, Sabina mentally revised, it wasn’t as though four hundred magic points was a small amount. Aila’s natural capacity was… eight hundred and ninety. Since she had used one unaltered version of the spell, and one modified explosion version, that meant she had spent six hundred magic points on just those two spells, which was a little more than sixty-seven percent of her total reserves. That was a lot of resource draw, but well worth it in Sabina’s opinion. That one dome was absolutely, undeniably, dead.

“Hey! Sabby! I’m getting strange reports—”

“Aila just blew up an impenetrable Demon dome by casting two spells that were titanic pillars of arcane energy and it sent a lot of goo everywhere!”

“…okay!”

Sabina smiled to herself. She was really starting to get good at explaining things to other people.