Siege State
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Pinnacle

Tom charged as the drake struggled to shrug off its disorientation. Smashing its head directly into the ground had left it dazed.

Serves you right for trying to eat Sesame, he thought grimly.

As he stepped close to its body, he placed his spear back into his spatial storage, and drew his new axe from the loop at his belt. He wasn’t doing enough damage with his polearm, and he needed to end this fight soon.

He made to attack one of its hindlegs, then had to execute a rushed duck as it swept its tail behind itself for balance. He immediately stepped into its other leg and swung his axe at the joint of its knee with all his might.

As he swung, he flooded the open enchantment on the axe with mana. Mana from Suffering, to be exact.

Pink lightning crackled into existence along the cutting edge of the axe. It bit deep into the meat behind the drake’s knee, arcs of rose lightning spitting from the cut. He was rewarded with another roar of pain from it, but instinctively wrenched the axe from the wound and rolled to the side. Not a second too soon, either - the drake kicked out behind it with the injured limb, hoping to crush him. As it was, the claws, long as Tom’s forearm, sailed by him by mere inches. With reflexes heightened by Sweet Suffering, he lashed out at the limb as he rolled, dealing the drake another wound for its troubles.

He came to his feet and quickly closed again, this time sinking the axe into the front side of the joint by its hip. Some premonition warned him, and he went boneless, letting his weight drag him to the ground, and the axe from the wound. The barbed tail speared air where he had just stood. It skittered harmlessly from the drake’s own scales before thrashing about like a whip, perhaps hoping to clear Tom away from it.

He watched from the ground and the tail flicked back and forth through the air, as the drake regained its bearings, shaking its head and testing its injured leg. Tom rolled under it, casting Agony as he went, and slammed the axe into the leg on the opposite side as he rolled clear and stood.

The strike was true and deep, and the beast roared hatred into the cold air once more. Tom drew his arm back for another strike, and cried out in sudden pain. He looked down, and saw the barbed tail stabbed straight through his thigh. With a wet rip, the drake tore it free, leaving a gaping hole in the meat of his leg.

It immediately started to knit itself together again, the massive regeneration provided by Sweet Suffering putting in work. The drake, obviously having felt itself score a wound, rounded on him.

It turned awkwardly, the wounds on its legs hindering its movement. In fact, all of its movements seemed a little sluggish. It would not be enough, though. Its neck tensed, rising, and it prepared to strike down on him while he stood immobilised.

The instant that Tom saw its muscles release, he leapt to the side, springing off his good leg. The action ended up being abortive, closer to a roll than a jump.

Tom’s heightened reflexes proved their worth, and the drake found empty air where it aimed for flesh. Its jaws clamped shut with a gristly sounding snap. Tom stared into the drake’s huge yellow eye from less than a foot away.

He frantically scrambled backwards as it bit at him again, drawing his legs out of reach of its fangs just in time. He lashed out desperately with his axe, funnelling mana into the enchantment, landing a cut halfway up its narrow snout.

He cast Agony on it as it drew its head away, watching his dwindling mana pool with growing dread. He couldn’t keep this up for much longer. He had enough mana left for maybe one more Wild Strike, and it would not be enough to kill it. He would need to use it to hopefully turn the drake, allowing him to close with its body again with his axe.

The drake repositioned itself, drawing its head back to strike at him properly, instead of more frantic snapping. Once again, he noticed its movements slowing, just slightly. Its lithe, sinuous movements were no longer as fluid, even accounting for its injured legs. Tom surged to his feet as the wound in his thigh finally closed enough for him to stand.

He readied himself for the inevitable lunge, keeping an eye out for any quick attacks from its tail. Being even a second too slow would cost him his life. Things were looking dire. He had wounded the drake, and its movements were clearly ginger, but it was still far from dead.

It reared to strike again, shuffling slightly closer, watching him with yellow eyes full of disconcerting animal cunning. It was clearly judging the distance, unwilling to miss again and allow him another opportunity to damage it. He stepped slightly to the side, and his foot fetched against a rock, causing a small hitch in his step. That was all it took. The drake struck.

At that moment, Tom’s heightened reflexes and alertness left him, the buff provided by Sweet Suffering guttering out. He tried desperately to push mana into another Wild Strike, but it was still on cooldown. The descending fangs of the drake seemed to both speed up and slow down, and Tom saw his death clearly.

A deafening roar rang through the forest. Tom’s bond with Sesame flared back into life. The bear burst into action from where he had lain forgotten, now behind the drake.

A storm of obsidian blasted into the lizard’s already injured hindleg. Tom rolled again, feeling the impact of the drake’s strike behind him, and came to his feet near its body. He swung at the side of its neck, even as he felt Sesame begin to rake it with his claws on its other side.

The beast grew frantic, thrashing about with spines and tail and legs, trying to clear them away from it. Tom cast Agony at it, and struck out with his axe in workmanlike chops.

There was no sign of the miasma again, perhaps having been stymied by Hush, or maybe being a resource that required some regeneration. Either way, Tom was glad. He couldn’t finish this without his familiar’s help.

The drake thrashed about some more, but three body temperings and a decade of training made Tom too quick, and Sesame was heavy as a boulder. He could feel it moving slower and slower, its wounds finally catching up to it. Finally, it gave up, and whirled towards Tom, ignoring the damage it must have done to its injured legs to push them so hard. It reared into the air, glaring down at him with baleful eyes.

Tom had a second to prepare himself. He drew in a deep breath, judging distances, judging timing. It struck again, its two great fangs hinging down from the roof of its mouth. Its fanged maw plunged towards him.

Tom struck upwards, having replaced his axe with his spear. And more importantly, he struck true. At the critical moment, Wild Boar Strike came off cooldown, and he spent the last of his mana to cast it.

He felt the spearhead sink into the roof of the drake’s mouth, and then he was knocked to the ground by its snout. He found himself thrown away along the ground by its jaw, tumbling over roots and stone. A sharp pain in his ribs as he impacted a hard, half-buried object let him know something had broken. He came to a stop a dozen feet away, gasping in pain.

The drake released a pained, wheezing hiss, stumbling about drunkenly. Tom’s spear stuck out of the side of its mouth at an angle, between two of its long teeth, lodged in the soft roof of its mouth. A great gout of breath blew out of its nostrils, along with twin streams of thick, red blood.

It tipped to one side, trying to right itself, its head swaying on its long neck like a drunken villager wandering home from a harvest feast. It stepped, and one of its legs crumpled as it tried to put weight on it. A cascade of small explosions rippled along its body from detonating whisper tags. Suddenly, the beast was collapsing to the ground.

Tom felt relief flower in him, but it was quickly extinguished by panic. The enormous lizard was falling straight towards where he lay on his back. He pushed his abused body, trying to crawl out of its shadow.

He didn’t make it far enough. The drake’s shoulder slammed into the ground, sending tremors spreading through the earth. Its long neck followed, crashing towards Tom like a rotten tree.

All he could see was its yellow eyes, dead and hollow, as they rushed towards him.

Breath left him in a great explosion, and pain shot through his chest as more ribs snapped. The drake’s head, its mouth lolling open in death, had landed directly atop him, its fangs slamming into him lengthways like iron bars. His chest, his hips, his legs, were all a mass of bright agony. He pushed weakly at the fangs with his arms, but as narrow as the drake’s head was, it was still far too heavy for him to lift.

Sesame saved him from his gruesome predicament of staring down a dead drake’s nostrils. The bear trundled up and shoved its head to one side with a massive, furred shoulder, and then immediately plonked himself down on his haunches, breathing hard.

Tom spent a moment just lying there in the soft soil. He pulled his wisp over, even the mental exertion a monumental task, and pulled one of Harvey’s potions from his storage space.

He tipped the oily concoction down his throat, and the taste of lemons overwhelmed him. The discrepancy between the texture of the liquid and its flavour almost had him lose his stomach, but he managed to keep it down after a valiant struggle.

A warm, wet sensation leaked through his body in increments, like someone pouring hot porridge on him. He felt a grotesque popping in his chest as his ribs healed. Soon, the pain receded, and the rest of his bruised body began to clamour at him, until even that dwindled away to nothing.

“Good job, buddy,” Tom wheezed, lying on his back in front of the bear. Sesame gave a small, triumphant roar, and then fell onto his back with his legs in the air, exhausted. Their bond thrummed with satisfaction.

Tom threw his arms wide, staring at the mottled green canopy, and marvelling at how alive he felt. He burst into maniacal laughter. Eventually, he trailed off, and spent a decent while reading his wisp notifications properly.

Wild Strike was an excellent new skill, and he was more than happy with it. It was exactly what he wanted to round out his skillset. It was perhaps slightly too costly and with slightly too long a cooldown for its effect, but that was just how cycle skills worked. The versatility it provided was well worth the trade off in Tom’s opinion. Boar Strike gave him another way to control space, and Eagle Strike extended his range which was, up until this point, quite low. Both parts of the cycle provided him with a sorely needed method to front-load some damage, and would complement Agony well.

If he was happy with Wild Strike, though, then he was utterly jubilant with his pinnacle skill. Passive skills were slightly rarer than active ones, and auras were uncommon, verging on rare. To score an aura as his pinnacle was a real coup.

Every Idealist had an aura, loosely defined as the area around them in which their mana naturally ‘leaked’. Even that definition was reductive though. An aura was almost like a scent, something that permeated the nearby ambient mana, tinged it ever so slightly.

For most Idealists, it had no effect. It was impossible to detect another Idealist’s aura, not unless you had a sensory skill for it, so slight was the effect. Tom’s Hunter-Gatherer couldn’t pick up Val’s aura, for example, it being too diffuse to register.

An aura skill, however, granted the caster’s aura a tangible effect. Or effects, as the case may be. They tended to increase the area of the aura too.

Now that he had had the time to properly read through it, aspects of the fight with the drake made a lot more sense. It had begun to move slightly slower throughout the fight, more than its injured legs could account for. That would have been Survival’s contribution to his pinnacle: Subdue. Stutter, the effect Silence had contributed, had not had any effect, at least not that Tom had noticed, and neither had Sorrow, contributed by Suffering. Sorrow, at least, would definitely have been slowly wearing away at the drake, and slowly healing him in turn, just not enough to make much of a difference.

Tom was ecstatic. Both his final Survival skill and his pinnacle skill would help him immensely in fights to come. Both helped shore up critical weaknesses in his skillset. He wouldn’t necessarily have minded having more lopsided skills, and he knew that even the most well-rounded Idealists still had to have weaknesses, but it rankled his sensibilities to have such glaring faults.

Now, his only real areas of vulnerability were the fact that he still was lacking answers to multiple enemies, and that he had no movement skills. He also only had the one response to threats at long range, but at least he had a response now.

The first, he could hopefully ameliorate somewhat through future uplifts, and the second, he could mitigate by leaning into his strengths and controlling the battlefield around him.

His damage was still rather limited, as well, especially compared to someone like Val, but he could hopefully fix that with uplifts too.

He felt Sesame perk up from where he was lying beside him, and a moment later a wet, moist nose was poking into his face.

“Hey Smitten, how was the show?” he asked. Smitten gave him a big doggy grin as an answer, her fluffy tail wagging. Footsteps sounded a moment later.

“You look nice and relaxed, Tom,” Val called to him. “You must be ready for some more training, then!”