SoK Chapter 210

“It just had to be one of the days that I wasn’t one of those getting Awakening. This is a bunch of bull—“

“Sarah, calm down and shut up.“ Farid commanded, looking at TJ for confirmation. Once TJ motioned for the descendant of Shiva to continue while he himself continued rushing through the motions and chants of Ritualistic Transfer. “You can get up there without it, others can’t. Seth, you and Molly are the two most experienced people who will be up there, other than TJ and Sarah. You’re on casualty control, unless TJ calls you for something specifically. Sarah, you’re with him, right with him, if he goes down, we’re all dead. Everybody down here, stay together near the temple. You can do what we practiced, channeling some of your resources into the temple for TJ to draw on in the sky. This is finally the time that we’re in the perfect position to take them out. Their flock keeps growing, and if we let it keep going, there will be casualties before the fight comes to a close.”

Farid’s quick commands were something TJ smiled in gratitude about as he continued to chant as quickly as he could manage. The omnipresent storm overhead was slowly being usurped by the Patriarch Boss, and he needed to get up there as soon as he finished these final steps of battle preparations. Fortunately, every member of his community of North Tempe was used to this. They’d gone through drills and practices, and everyone stepped forward to put one hand on the base of the Ziggurat’s lower level. Once TJ finished his chant and stood in the center of the circle atop the pyramid, his blood flying in a circle around him while suspended by the wind, he flicked a hand towards each of the people who touched the Ziggurat. A small portion of his blood flicked towards them and imprinted in a line down their foreheads from their hairlines down to the tip of their nose.

As TJ sent the last of his blood flying at the final participant, Sarah, he felt his own resources merge with everybody else’s, as well as the temple's reserves. Finally ready, he raised a fist. Nobody hesitated to do the same, faces serious but excited at the prospect of being freed from the looming threat of a Boss. Seth was the first to begin the call, but the rest of the 67 occupants of North Tempe joined in, with only the exception of Luz: “Glory to the Storm Serpent!”

TJ transformed into a coatl and threw himself into the sky. The Storm Manipulation that was granted to the 15 participants in Storm Serpent’s Awakening was Copper tier, insufficient to allow them to fly, but with TJ’s assistance in the form of a gentle wind that buoyed them all up, 17 people took to the skies, counting himself and Sarah. 

Flashing lightning was the first indicator of where the thunderbirds were, though TJ could feel where the Patriarch specifically was, due to it challenging his Divine Authority. This was their fifth conflict, and every time that the bastard had returned, it’d come at the worst possible time for TJ to be able to mount a meaningful counterattack. Every time, though, they both had learned more about the other, with the thunderbird, realizing that attempted stealthy approaches did very little, now that TJ had made this land his own. It couldn’t prepare its lightning without warning him of their presence, nor could it dive down lower towards him, because that put the thunderbirds within reach of the grounded humans. The last two attacks, the thunderbirds had begun working in two groups, with the Boss half a mile or so away from the rest of the Thunderbirds that prepared their assault on the ground.

The past several times they’d come and attacked, the thunderbirds were mildly effective in smiting the people on the ground, able to destroy things in their attacks but there hadn’t been any casualties yet. TJ intended to keep it that way, and he and Sarah closed in on the Boss as its nearly green feathers crackled with electricity. He hadn’t managed to get it in his jaws since acquiring Storm Fang, but today, things would change. Molly and Seth would be able to take care of the supporting thunderbirds and their lightning while he himself finally killed the Boss.

“Sticking together?” Sarah asked as her multicolored wings flapped behind her. TJ could feel that most of the lift wasn’t actually generated from the flapping but from some magical divine working behind it, and he didn’t care to dwell on that, instead cursing his mind for wandering.

“If you can close in on it, go ahead.” TJ answered as the squad of 17 burst through the cloud cover and into the clearer upper skies where the thunderbirds waited for them. As with every other time they’d come in contact with the monsters, there were more of the flying beasts. TJ wasn’t sure how the patriarch continued gathering more to his… harem? He wasn’t sure if the rest of them were females, and, to his own guess, there really wasn’t any way that there was a flock of one male and forty females, was there?

Molly exploded in a burst of lightning, small feathered wings growing from each of her paws as she threw herself through the gathering cloud of lightning in the center of the circling Thunderbirds, pulling TJ’s thoughts, again, back to the battle at hand. The Elite monsters spread into three different groups, each one looking to summon a smaller, but more distant origin for their lightning to strike down at the helpless people below. Molly and Seth threw themselves into battle, but TJ couldn’t pay attention to the fight happening with the other monsters, instead Appraising the Patriarch.

Thunderbird Patriarch Boss (Copper (I)), Level 57

“Shit! It keeps getting stronger faster than we did. Does it have something to do with them being monsters?” TJ asked. 

“I got no clue! And does that really matter?” Sarah replied.

Neither needed to verbally answer, and TJ compressed to different types of Storm Manipulation in his mouth, a vacuum and an explosion. He had long since learned that sending a direct attack at the Boss would very easily be avoided, and it could stay in the air much more easily than he could, so it was a waste of his resources to throw himself wildly into attempting to strike the Patriarch. Even so, with his ability to draw on dozens of people’s resources, he could afford to be a little wasteful in an attempt to get into killing distance of the Boss, and that was to say nothing of the nearly limitless battery that his Ziggurat was. Now, finally, he and his people were in a position to leverage their strength and Attributes against the Boss as it attacked.

He wouldn’t squander the opportunity.

Sarah flitted forward, frosty air trailing in her wake, and swung her axe in several sweeping blows to attempt to slow the Boss. Each movement was accompanied by bursts of snowy air. The first two strikes were dodged, but after that, it was forced to vanish into lightning and flash away to keep from being slowed at the initial engagement. TJ heard Molly shout commands, but kept his focus entirely on the Boss as his other subordinates focused on the regular Elite tiered monsters. Even so, TJ felt the moments that his subordinates were struck by thunderbird attacks, their HP dropping as he was forced to pull from the people below to keep his support system alive and airborne.

TJ‘s two strongest attacks prepared and his attention fully on what was in front of himself, he started to swirl the wind towards him in a several hundred foot diameter. It was far from enough to stop the Boss’s movement, but it was constantly forced to fight against TJ‘s wind, and with his storm slowly morphing into a tornado under his control, the slight expenditure right now created an ever more beneficial environment for himself and his allies. There was, of course, the mental toll of keeping the storm from touching down on the ground and ripping into his people below, but that didn’t take much. TJ roared a challenge to the Boss, knowing that its pride would be pricked if it immediately fled from a challenge as soon as contact was made. He couldn’t say what that might do to its path or leadership, but it wouldn’t be good. Now that TJ was entirely prepared, he didn’t mind taking blows and draining the reserves from his temple to ensure that this Boss could no longer torment his people.

The Patriarch rushed forward with a scream of rage as its eagle cry filled the air as well as TJ’s head. That was a new Skill, but TJ took the damage, uncaring as he drew lightly from his people down below to keep himself at full. The Patriarch’s wings flashed, and, taking speed from TJ’s tornado, rushed in faster than TJ could react. Its wings sliced deep into his side, his blood flying through the air. TJ paid it no mind, instead sending tendrils of wind to wrap around the monster's feet as he pulled himself towards it. The tornado and the wind ripped at the thunderbird, but it wrenched itself free with a victorious cry.

Sarah flashed forward with another strike, forcing the monster to dodge away and turn itself into lightning again. The explosion of frost somehow slowed the monster's lightning as her use of Valkyrian Ascension to create the freezing storm drew well over 1000 of her Stamina to strike the monster. TJ threw thousands more resources into her, drawing from below to keep her at top condition while the monster‘s lightning crawled up her arm. The Valkyrie stiffened but continued fighting as the Patriarch Boss flashed into lightning and appeared several hundred feet away. Each time it did so, TJ knew it purged itself of most of its afflictions, but they could still build on it, and Sarah rushed forward to reengage with the larger bird. 

It evaded her approach, streaking back towards TJ. Again, it moved more quickly than he could fully react to, but as it continued its strafing escape, TJ yanked it back towards him with the same approach as before. He knew that he could feed the monster's pride and allow it to escape, and he did so. Its eyes seemed to sneer at him while it escaped his wind's grasp. The bird immediately turned not towards TJ, but towards Sarah, where it flashed into lightning and streaked through Sarah‘s torso. Her armor flickered with yellow lightning as she screamed and tried to strike back to no avail. The damn thing was just too fast, and in the same movement, it rushed towards TJ.

The Neophyte took two more blows in quick succession, each time acting as if he was entirely unable to react to the Boss's speed and strength. Sarah shouted for him to do better, but TJ didn't acknowledge her, instead dedicating himself to tricking the Boss. When it approached for the fifth strike, TJ could see the slight twist in his body that would turn it into a corkscrewing harbinger of death, and TJ knew it was time to stop his façade. As the monster’s wings tore through his body, Sarah’s screams filled the air. He didn’t mind it and pulled the monster back towards him while activating Divine Manifestation and strengthening his Storm Manipulation. More of his resources drained away as TJ yanked the Boss towards him. It screeched in distress as it realized it’d been tricked, trying to turn back into an embodiment of lightning. TJ was prepared, and spat out the compressed ball of wind and frost in his mouth, making it explode beside the monster.

As the thunderbird’s body began its transformation, wind and ice ripped the clump of lightning apart, forcing the Skill to be dispelled. The Patriarch remained in the same location, bloodied and haggard as its feathers fell from its body, but TJ was far from finished. He released his compressed vacuum from his mouth, yanking with all the force of his tornado, and the Boss was pulled into his mouth. With Storm Fang empowering him, as well as Storm Scythe, TJ ripped through the monster‘s body, the boss shrieking in anguish, as it tried to turn itself into lightning again. 

The Storm Serpent allowed no such escape. With Storm Manipulation, TJ continued to draw more air than his body could contain into his belly, a fierce wind ripping apart the lightning manifestation of the Boss as his teeth, crackling with ice, shredded the boss's body, both as lightning and as flesh.

The Boss hadn’t died, and TJ didn’t see the kill notification, so he wrapped his coils around himself, creating a loose sphere of coatl constriction. Sarah floated outside, her attention on the struggling, trapped Boss. All the while, he gnashed his teeth, thick fangs tearing the beast to pieces as the delicious taste of its blood coated his tongue and throat. The Boss was dying, and TJ felt the aura that empowered its followers fading as kill notification after kill notification flooded his mind. Dozens of thunderbirds were killed, but the Boss still lived, and it keened with a piteous fear.

With a final desperate force of effort, the Thunderbird attempted to turn to lightning once again, to escape, and managed barely to free itself from TJ’s jaws, only to run into his shifting coils and bounce back into its scaly prison. Then, TJ lunged forward and bit one last time.

Thunderbird Patriarch Boss (Copper (I)), Level 57, Slain. Experience gained.

When finally, the deed was done, TJ had a surprisingly well preserved body, as the Boss’s final expenditure of its MP had restored its body. TJ held it in his mouth as he uncoiled himself and disregarded the new notifications as Sarah looked on from outside.

“I wish you’d let me do something.” She joked as she reached forward and took the body in her hand, the shining gauntlets of her right hand, grasping the base of the monster's skull.

“You took its attention and kept it frenzied.” TJ disagreed as he prepared himself to watch the destruction of the remaining thunderbirds. “If it had been more relaxed, it would’ve known that I was holding something back. Instead, it needed to push itself to take you out of the fight for a little bit to try to strike back at me. Your presence was key, even if you didn’t do much damage.”

Sarah grunted as she held the corpse aloft and shouted, “Glory to the Storm Serpent! Victory to the Storm Serpent! Victory!“

Shouts of excitement answered her, but an even more blessed answering cry came from TJ’s subordinates: the complete and utter destruction of the thunderbirds as dozens more kill notifications flashed in his mind. That and three more levels for Neophyte, of course.