The attack force moved through the titanwoods with purpose, fed supplementary information as they went from forward scouts that were dedicated to the task.

Niko was eyeing the forest in general when the lead squad moved next to theirs, even at the brisk pace the teams were moving. In spite of being on the same side, Niko felt a pang of wariness come over him at their approach.

“So, you’re the Wyldwalkers?” The question seemed innocuous enough, but Niko felt it was a fairly loaded one.

“That’s us.” Niko stated, somewhat cheerily; if he was mistaken, he at least didn’t want to come off as too standoffish.

The tier four sabrecat smiled – which Niko had to remind himself wasn’t a threat posture, ironically, considering smiling wasn’t a normal thing in animals from Earth – and then said, “I owe you all my thanks. You got revenge for us, from what I hear.”

Niko was utterly bewildered then, but Ronald made a noise of recognition, “You’re Thorne, aren’t you?”

“The same. My comrades and I have collected ourselves well from what happened, so you don’t have to worry about if we’re capable of leading.” He grinned, “We’ll make sure to watch over everyone, so feel free to cut loose later.”

At that, they put distance from them, moving between the groups, and Niko felt somewhat silly for having been on the defensive. Caution was all well and good, though, but he was just glad he hadn’t acted outright hostile.

Still, he turned to look at Ronald, “So… What the cluck was that?”

“They were the tier four team that was attacked by the Memory Thief before we went out to find it.” Ronald supplied, “I hadn’t actually met Thorne until now, but I did catch Dietre. I just didn’t recognize him in the group.”

“Fair, some of you humans look too similar to me,” Sasha contributed, “It is good that we’re under the charge of someone with a vested interest in us. Though, I will admit I’m still a little concerned of their… condition.”

Niko’s gaze settled on them once more, reflexively inspecting them with his Aether Sight. To him, everything seemed to be in order, with no instability in their essence, and while he didn’t know if that could be counted as a guarantee, it at least indicated that they were competent to him. It did make him feel fulfilled to have proof of their efforts, but he did share some of Sasha’s concerns. But the other teams seemed unbothered, whether they knew what had happened to Thorne’s group or not, of course remained unknown.

Skye settled a hand under some of Niko’s feathers and gave him a scratch, “Either way, we know what we’ve got to do.”

He inclined his head at that, before panning his vision around to the rest of the group. It was interesting in a humorous sort of way, but every member of the Wyldwalkers were now acting as cavaliers, mount and rider both.

Stella and Ronald had a tandem saddle, of sorts, on Thokk, though much like Niko’s equipment, it didn’t immediately look like a saddle. The armor was shaped in such a way that the pair could relatively easily ride on his back, and given that Thokk still walked on all fours much of the time, that worked out to their favor. Additionally, both used long-reaching weapons, and Thokk appeared to be utterly unruffled by it.

Sasha’s, similarly, had a set of armor which had formed plating on the back to allow Dachna to hitch a ride with her. She was large and strong enough that his weight didn’t matter, but he did have to be mindful of his posture. Apparently the two agreed that their patterns would work well together, though they would have to do much of their practice in battle. They’d try to keep things safe, but Niko was fairly certain that of the groups present, their combination of abilities would make disengaging far easier should the need arise.

What he found most interesting was that Charlotte didn’t have anything resembling a saddle at all, Mithel just sat down straight on her back with a bunch of webbing that the spider happily wove into position for her. Niko was a little worried that they wouldn’t be able to communicate, but somehow they got by with just gestures and the occasional, “Friends?” with a specific inflection.

‘Is it weird that I want her to put off learning to talk? That’s pecking adorable.’ Niko thought to himself privately. Of course, that’d be unreasonable… So he’d just enjoy it while it lasted.

That said, they did receive a lot of odd looks from the rest of the teams from time to time. Niko felt their eyes slide off of him and Charlotte, though, more perplexed on seeing that Sasha and Thokk were allowing this. Then again, with their current mounted configuration, they were able to move much faster and in greater relative safety than otherwise. Thokk, especially, would be very hard to put down even in a straight up ambush, given that Ronald would be able to answer with a barrier in the blink of an eye, thanks to his practice with it.

While they were eager to find the Dawr, the procession did stop from time to time, letting their members be rested enough, and to ensure that their scouts weren’t compromised. After every camp out, the scouts would return, brief everyone on the situation, and plans made accordingly. This repeated three times, before the scouts reported that the convoy of Dawr was very near.

“Alright everyone,” Thorne called out, his relaxed demeanor nowhere to be seen now, “This is going to be a simple strike. A frontal team will attack and capture the attention of the Dawr forces, while a second team is going to strike in from the side to deal greater damage, and draw attention back off of the front line. When the second team hits, the first will fall back, and then bombard the Dawr with ranged attacks while the second team withdraws. We’ll be setting traps for both teams to move through in the event that the Dawr pursuit is insistent.”

“Both teams have their own risks, but I’ll have it known that the Warlord appears to be more central in the formation, so there’s a higher chance that he’ll respond to the flank attack. My team will be on standby for if that happens, and if the warlord attacks, we are to disengage,” He strongly emphasized the last word, “We are not here to assassinate a tier five. There’s almost no chance of us dealing enough damage to keep them down. If he moves to combat, leave, regardless of how much damage you think you can inflict with just a few moments. It’s not worth losing valuable combatants on a skirmishing venture.”

That much seemed fair to Niko, and after a brief discussion within their group, the Wyldwalkers decided to join the second group. Attacking from the front would be useful, but considering how much damage they could inflict in a short span of time, simply being distractions on the first team seemed to be a waste of a valuable first strike. With an hour or two to prepare, at best, the groups got to work. Group two had ten teams, a little less than half of the overall force, but their general tier was higher. In this group, the Wyldwalkers were the lowest in overall power, but no one underestimated them for it, especially when Thorne gave them a position near the point. He seemed to have faith that they could deal a lot of damage.

Niko intended to prove him right.

The other team had a large number of lower tiers, but they did have an experienced team with them. That would hopefully be enough to draw the enemy in, given that they might underestimate the overall threat thanks to the frontal attack being weaker. Meanwhile, the traps that were set were done by each team, but verified and cross checked before anyone approved their use. Nobody wanted to step on one of Mithel’s Sticky Acid traps, and doubly so for the makeshift grenades that Stella used. How they worked, Niko didn’t know yet, aside from the fact that Stella had heavily enchanted them. When she activated them, though, much of the enchantments simply winked out, and Niko wondered if perhaps those enchantments were for safety rather than to augment the blast.

‘I’ll keep an eye on that,’ On the retreat, he hoped to see them in action.

The various teams moved across the branches, forming irregular highways with growing foliage breaking up their sightlines. Some of the scouts climbed higher, careful to place themselves where they could go unseen, and to snipe out targets from afar when the action began. If they were lucky, they could catch a Shaman unawares, but Niko didn’t think they would be anywhere but the core of the formation.

Niko settled down into the brush, keeping himself fully obscured. He’d rely on Skye’s sense of hearing and his own Aether Sight to scan the area, knowing that his coloration didn’t exactly blend in. Above them, one of the scouts stared off into the distance, a sign that there was nothing to see yet.

“This is always my least favorite part of a hunt.” Niko complained softly, “Sitting down and being actively bored.”

That drew a few amused chuckles, but tapered off as the scout overhead stiffened. Eager to see if their enemy was drawing closer, Niko enhanced his own vision, trying to peer through the trees and the ambient essence. With his upgraded pattern, he found that the effort was more than manageable, and found himself looking at a veritable cloud of essence moving across the branch highways just one intersection away. He also noticed that there were a few traces of essence farther away from the formation.

Niko fed Skye the information, who grimaced. The half-elf pulled her bow and an arrow, before giving an almost imperceptible whistle. The scout overhead looked down, before noticing her gesturing in a direction ahead of them. The quilled creature, looking partly like a mongoose and a porcupine fused into one, followed her gesture before nodding. She made a gesture with her hands, counting down from five, to four, to three, before pulling her bow.

The two of them fired simultaneously, with Skye going for the head, and the scout firing a veritable buckshot of spines. Both hit the sneaking Dawr, who appeared out of a rudimentary stealth and fell away, tumbling into the darkness below.

“Watch for more,” Thorne whispered, before glaring in the direction of the Dawr army, “And change of plans, we’re attacking the moment the front makes contact.”

With silent acknowledgement, the teams readied themselves to move in. Niko thought he understood why he changed the plan. If the front team was detected early, the Dawr could instead attack them first. Even being aware of the ambush would put them in much greater peril.

Thus, when Niko picked up stronger essence signatures moving to the front of the formation, he cursed audibly, “They’re detected.”

“You’re sure?” Dietre spoke, surprising Niko at how close he’d gotten before he’d noticed him.

Concealing that surprise, Niko nodded once sharply, “Very. They’re moving several tier fours to the front, but I’m not seeing the warlord move from the center.”

Dietre and Thorne seemed to weigh that a few moments, likely no small part in wondering how accurate Niko’s vision was, before making a decision.

“Too much to risk; we’ll attack now and draw attention off of the front. Good find.” Thorne said, before moving to the tip of the formation.

The other teams mobilized, and Niko put a few considering glances out of mind. They could be curious all they wanted, but they’d find out soon enough if Niko was correct or not.

A few individuals flared their patterns, a kind of blanket moving out across the groups. Instinctively, Niko felt like his motions would be more concealed, using shadow, muffling sound, and even altering perceptions. Wordlessly, he tried to mix his own Wyldstrider pattern into the mix, and felt a sense of wonder as it seamlessly mingled with the rest, sharing a fraction of his boon with everyone in the formation. With his essence in the mix, he tried to find the source of the overarching pattern, before realizing that Dietre was the source. Somehow, his pattern was allowing others to contribute their own abilities to their comrades.

‘That’s a disgustingly strong team pattern. Very support oriented, but very clucking useful,’ Niko approved wholeheartedly. With a bolstered speed and a stealth utterly out of place in a charging army, the entire formation surged ahead. It strained his pattern to hold this, and he was certain he wasn’t alone in that, given how he felt the shared patterns strain, but it wouldn’t need to hold for long.

They ate up terrain, and what should have been a cavalcade of noise from their bull-rush was as silent as the grave. When they burst forth from the flank, tearing through whatever brush was in the way, the first Dawr that spotted them were just confused. Unable to register the soundless charge, or perhaps failing to resolve it in their awareness, they weren’t even able to sound the alarm before the first of the strike team stamped onto the flank.

“Loose!” Mithel shouted out, just as all sound from their charge burned into life, the screeching, roaring, and vicious glee of their attack breaking all at once. Screaming Dawr and the sounds of breaking bones and tearing flesh filled the air. Overhead, their assorted ranged attacks in the form of Mithel and Stella’s payloads, and the essence-based attacks of others sailed deeper into the enemy formation. Niko didn’t stop his charge, one of his talons slapping down on a tier two goblin and crushing its chest underfoot, even while Skye swept out with elongated talons of wood and slashed necks and heads.

Ahead the ranged attacks landed, all manner of elements wreaking havoc. A familiar firestorm flask raged and howled, on its own undoubtedly culling dozens. With the flame washing over a munitions cargo wagon, Niko expected that if there was anything explosive within, they’d shortly be adding to the devastation.

Besides that, Stella’s grenades were quite useful, dealing a lot of damage over a wide area and sending the Dawr into further disarray. Niko took the chance to try to find the greatest concentration of high tier essence sources. As expected, the front of the army to their left had a great deal more, with only a handful more to the center. They wouldn’t push that far in, but Niko was confident that he could cause a great deal of disarray on the front at least.

With a swelling breast, Niko took in great lungfuls of air, before his Carrion Call pattern blazed into action. He let loose a screech, both mental and physical, blasting out in a cone towards the front of the Dawr formation. Niko had underestimated both how much essence he put into the attack, and in how much more effective it would be. A fifth of his overall power went into it, and for ten meters the tier two Dawr in front of him simply keeled over, bleeding from every orifice. Essence surged into him, and Niko likewise felt the blood energy begin to surge out of them.

He leveraged his will, using the corrupted curse from Bant to overwhelm the shaman’s who no doubt were trying to empower their minions. Niko stole the power, with torrents of it flooding into him from the surging losses the Dawr were already receiving.

Beside him, Thokk created earth from nothing, setting up a defensive, but semi-mobile, barricade before they delved too deeply into the enemy to be able to pull back. It was shaped like a ‘V’ with the center missing. The reason why soon became clear, as Ronald formed a shield over top of it, and stabbed into the center with his empowered glaive, surges of opaque near-white energy cleaving through lesser Dawr with every strike. Stella contributed, jabbing her staff-turned-spear at the wall itself. Sigils flared on the surface with every hit, and Niko wondered at what their purpose was.

A blur of shadow and an altogether too attractive shiny object demanded Niko’s eye. He wasn’t alone in that, with a cluster of Dawr clamoring over each other manically to get to the opalescent object. Dachna swept out with a kama and chain, a recent addition to his weaponry, the chain and weapon somehow slithering midair to cut into his distracted prey. Doubling down on that, Sasha was little more than a living shadow with indistinct edges, claws and fangs flashing out so fast that Niko missed a few strikes when he blinked. With the goblins distracted, they fell over dead without even knowing what had happened.

Mithel and Charlotte, too, were supporting the battlefield. Charlotte was controlling her threads and slingshotting volatile compounds far deeper into the enemy formation than Mithel could do on her own. They seemed to be having a great time of it, too, given that he could hear Charlotte chittering wildly with glee with every explosion.

‘Mithel’s corrupting the youth, I see,’ Niko shook his head, amused at the pair's antics, even as a potion smashed into a hobgoblin’s face before exploding in rapidly expanding ice, tinted red from its target. Whether it was dead, Niko didn’t know, but it had certainly fallen over, unable to move from the sudden weight pressing in atop of it.

Niko swept out with his talons, using his newly moved Sharp Strike pattern to augment his sweeps. It was like he was raking through butter with a hot knife, and even when a hob stepped up to him, Niko didn’t feel especially threatened. He cawed in challenge at the thing – and then Skye chucked a borrowed spear from a goblin into its eye – leaving Niko huffing.

“That was totally mine.” Niko griped before decapitating the still-moving hob. It might have died on its own, but he wouldn’t forgo the excuse to claim the kill.

“Hey! That was definitely mine!” Skye sniped back, “He looked at me!”

“No, I’m pretty sure he was looking at me! I’m fabulous!” Indignant, Niko swatted several tier two goblins away with a wing sweep, before ducking back as a pair of hobs moved forward, both surging with essence.

“That’s just—” Skye blocked one of the two hob’s strikes with a burst of essence and now vastly longer claws from her wooden gauntlets, “You’re ridiculous! They don’t care! And I’m fabulous, too, anyways.”

“What’d you say?” Niko blinked in both shock, ironically pausing long enough that the hob stumbled in what was supposed to be an attempt to block Niko’s attack. Not one to waste an opportunity, Niko struck forth with his beak, Sharp Strike active and—

‘Holy pecking wow,’ More surprise jolted him as he nearly cleanly parted the hob from shoulder to stern, his musculature significantly stronger in his neck with his latest evolution.

“Nothing!” Skye made a frustrated sound, “Not a damn thing, you hear me Niko!?” As she shoved ten finger claws into the other hob after it failed to parry her.

“Fabulouuuuus~!” Niko trilled out, “Skye’s soooo fabuullouuuu—Ow!”

Skye, having cuffed Niko on the head, said, “Can you cut it out!? We’re on the battlefield!”

“So, it’s okay afterwards, got it!” Niko crowed unapologetically, before backing up. Not a moment later, he heard a loud horn blow, signaling the retreat.

“No—You---Argh!” Skye deflected another hob’s attack, this one a ranged essence strike. Several more came forwards, leaving the both of them parrying with Sharp Strikes or bark-armored fists. “Don’t tell Dachna!”

“Don’t tell Dachna what?” The roguish man said, seemingly spawning from nowhere. Sasha’s pattern, apparently, worked with a rider, too.

‘Disgusting combination,’ Niko happily thought, amusement and mischief twinkling in his eyes.

“Guys, we’re pulling out now,” Ronald said in a tone that was half exasperation, half joy, “You’ll want to put some distance between us and Thokk’s earth wall.”

“It is considerably more dangerous now!” The bear said, with an uncommon urgency in his voice, “Miss Stella did much to it.”

“Agreed! Go, now, please!” With Stella likewise affecting urgency, Niko wisely redoubled his efforts in pulling back.

The Dawr, however, were not so understanding. They surged forth, madness and rage incarnate, with more than a few of them frothing at the mouth. Niko, having stolen away much of their blood energy, had reduced the threat of a counter offensive, but he’d discovered that he could only absorb so much at once without directly concentrating on it. Some of the Dawr were cutting at the retreating teams, and Niko cringed as some of the beasts took strikes while falling back. Luckily, the majority of the Dawr here were still only tier two, but the hobs weren’t far behind, with champions rapidly gaining.

“Mithel, firebomb ten meters in front of me!” Niko called out, guessing how much he could handle.

“That’s well within danger range, Niko!” Mithel answered, “You sure?”

“Positive!” He ducked back as a hob stepped forward. A flash of essence activated from its blade, extending an essence edge to scrape against the neck armor Niko now had and leaving a cut in it. Letting out a piercing cry, he blasted the offending hob in the face with a Carrion Call, leaving him wincing and bleeding from the eyes while screaming. Niko didn’t risk pushing for more, with two more hobs flanking him.

“Bombs away!” Mithel shouted over the din, just barely audible through the combat and disengagement.

On his back, Skye’s grip tightened on him, and she squeezed against his back. She’d gotten a vague feeling for what he was planning, and Niko hoped that her silence was a tacit acceptance, and not just her hoping for the best.

The flask flew through the air, and Niko pumped a torrent of essence into his Particle Wing pattern just as the flask exploded on the weapon of a champion who stabbed out at the object before it could fly further into their formation.

‘That’s a little closer than I’d like,’ Wincing, Niko got to work, controlling heat around him and pushing that heat forwards. When the Firestorm flask erupted, his pattern was immediately put to task, funneling the flames back into the Dawr as he flapped hard, using the heat and momentum to push himself farther away. The others ran at full tilt, and just as he was about to stop, satisfied that he was far enough away, Thokk’s stone wall activated.

It didn’t explode, instead growing instantaneously in the forms of thin, sword-like spikes from its surface in every direction.

Then it exploded.

Niko felt a bit of stone hit him in the chest, before sticking into the armor there, but failing to punch through. It still felt like he’d been hit in the gut, though, but Niko was aware enough of himself in combat to not let it stop what he was doing. With the firestorm now firmly behind them, Niko flipped around and began to fly away at speed, only a meter or two over the heads of the rest of the teams.

Then he felt his feathers stand on end, and snapped his head back to see what was wrong.

A loud clang resounded just behind him, with Thorne and Dietre both intercepting a bloody red strike that crackled with malevolence. A familiar pattern surged in the air as Dietre called upon defensive patterns, and Ronald answered even before Niko could try to figure out what he could add. The white-energy barrier sprang up, along with several sigils and what looked to be other kinds of defensive abilities that Niko didn’t recognize.

Even so, the twisting, red energy of the strike seemed to twist in on itself, trying to burrow through the barriers, and Niko felt Ronald’s reserves start to take an immense hit, even being augmented by the others, before the attack finally died with a hissing sound. Niko swallowed hard, before looking up at the source of the attack.

The warlord eyed him directly, glaring balefully at him, with a cowl of red energy surrounding him. There was a hatefulness there that Niko was at a loss to see directed at him, up until he felt the twinge in his soul, where Bant’s converted brand was.

‘Looks like he knows I’m on Bant’s personal hit list,’ Niko thought gravely, ‘Could at least have announced himself first. So rude.’

He mouthed something, and Niko felt his brain translate it, “I’m coming for you, heretic.”

Niko felt he’d pale at that, especially when the warlord crouched down as if he was about to jump the distance to him, when Mithel pulled out their secret weapon.

“Everyone run! We have no idea how well this is going to work!” Mithel screamed out, pulling out a cannon-like object from her bag, something that certainly shouldn’t have fit, with the Memory Thief’s core set into the back of it. Essence crackled along the barrel, and Niko felt his eyes wince at the twisting distortion inside of it. The warlord must have seen it too, because he paused, a frown of confusion on his face as his eyes moved off of Niko for the first time.

With a sound like tearing cloth, a beam of power emitted forth from the cannon, and Niko felt the essence in the air shred apart at its passing. It hit the warlord straight on, sending him flying backwards, and to Niko’s surprise hemorrhaged the red energy and essence alike with the impact. In an instant, he was out of sight, and Mithel swept the beam around. It didn’t act like energy, more like a solid force was shredding through things. Tens of goblins died instantly, even hobs, with the one champion who had taken the Firestorm to the face being the only thing still standing after Mithel swept it over it. Before she could swing back for another pass and focus fire said champion, the beam petered out to nothing.

There was only silence on both sides for a heartbeat, before the lesser Dawr screamed and went anywhere not in their direction.

The strike teams looked to Mithel and Stella, who admired their weapon. With a shrug, Mithel said, “I’m going to call this one Hyper Beam.”

Niko snorted and rolled his eyes, “We should retreat, that attack didn’t kill the Warlord, but he’s definitely going to be pissed.”