When the signal came, it took the form of an asinine shout rather than the toll of a mighty bell or the explosion of a cannon, but it was all the impetus Frenzy Plant needed to begin. No sooner had the announcement of the game's commencement been given then the sky above turned cloudy. In the palms of her hands, clasped together, a blinding bright light formed like a star being born. It grew, forming a basketball-sized orb that to all onlookers seemed terribly familiar. Air streamed toward her from all directions, rushing at the sorceress as if in a vacuum. It whipped at the hair and clothing of all in its path. To stare into the sphere clutched in the Librarian's hands was to stare into a raging, tumultuous manifestation of the primal power that surrounded the planet—a fearsome tempest, coagulated atmosphere, a world's worth of extreme weather in miniature. Every breath in the arena was held, if not stolen, as Indigo's Whitesky Eye came to be. A roar of effort escaped her lips as she rose into the air, buoyed up by power while her Eye vibrated violently, and with all her strength she bent down and brought her arms up so that her head and the Eye would meet.
Instantly, a wave of the accumulated wind burst outward. At the beginning, it wasn't strong enough to throw her allies to the ground, but as the gale spread it picked up speed and force. Only a second later it reached its limit and began to turn, creating a column of whirling air in the colosseum with Frenzy Plant's elite as its center. With the image of an apocalyptic storm fresh on the minds of those who'd witnessed the Whitesky Eye yesterday, this more tame turn of events constituted both a relief and an oddity. Above the noisy torrent of air the voice of Indigo came, somehow amplified.
”The true power of the Whitesky Eye! I can sense everything in a fifty foot radius. This is my domain!” Floating in the air and with eyes as brilliantly white as the clouds of a snowstorm, the sorceress punctuated her proclamation by performing a dramatic sweeping gesture with her hand. Abruptly the twister 'closed up', its vicious rotation increasing in speed and density so much so that nobody within could be seen.
Inside, closed off from the rest of the guilds by Indigo's tornado barrier and sheltered in the eye of the storm, the other soldiers went to work. Dmitri, not eager to be outdone, called,
“Asura!” to summon forth four extra magma arms from runes on his back. His brutal magic power burned to be unleashed, but in accordance with the plan the flaming brawler reined in his lust for battle. Concentrating deeply, he channeled his power into his summoned arms. Intentionally he separated their runes from their convenient locations on his body to float in the air as the arms became larger. When Dmitri willed them to, the great arms beat the earth, scooping chunks from the ground to fuse in the heat and pressure of their clenched fists into igneous rock. These, Dmitri guided his arms to carefully place beneath where Indigo floated, ghostlike. Zander, using his ruby sword as a conduit, mortared the blocks together with his signature magic substance.
To hasten the labor and turn at least ten minutes' work into one minute's, Indigo uttered another incantation.
”Tailwind!” At her call, silvery gusts of wind blew in to surround her guildmates, drastically increasing their speed. With the aid of Hyun and Owen pitching in where they could, Zander and Dmitri piled the stones together into the shape upon which the soldiers had agreed only moments earlier. The biting cold of Indigo's cyclone helped cool the heat-infused stone, tempering it, and as precious seconds ticked by, Frenzy Plant's objective took shape. From outside, all that anyone could see was the imposing shadow of a large, cylindrical mass taking shape.
Before long, the twister began to grow thinner. With surprising speed it shrunk, becoming only about a fourth of its original diameter, but something else became apparent as it did. Sitting on the top of the cyclone was a tower, the stones of its walls burned black and sealed together by dazzling red ruby. Rough-hewn, it nevertheless looked remarkably like the guard tower of some medieval castle, complete with a doorless entryway near the bottom and holes in the walls to be uses as windows. Atop the tower stood Zander, Hyun, Owen, and Dmitri, looking down at the competition from on high. A white glow from within, closer to its base and the whirling cyclone that stretched from its underside all the way to the ground, confirmed the presence of Indigo keeping it aloft.
A very small smile graced Hyun's face.
”We must be silly fools to make such a grand spectacle of ourselves. Still, it is quite amazing what we can do.” She took a deep breath of the sky's clear, free air before moving toward a hole in one side of the roof. Through it she could drop from platform to platform until she was at the bottom, but before she did, she glanced at her teammates.
”I'll do my duty, then. Give them hell.” With that, she disappeared.
For a few seconds, Dmitri's hand had hung in the air, waiting for a high-five. Zander took his time returning the gesture, though it was not begrudgingly. Creating the Howling Djinn's Keep from nothing in such a short span of time had been nothing short of a titanic effort for them, but the battle hadn't even started.
”Here we go,” Zander declared.
”You two know, I'm sure, that there are a few mages down there who can fly. I expect them to come for us any moment now that the barrier storm has been converted into our propulsion system. Fortunately, they will be our only challenge. From here, we three may rain spells on our enemies unhindered. We can also simply chase them down; the tornado keeping us up can also ruin the day of anyone it happens to bulldoze over. No matter where they may flee into the city, we can chase them down. They may attempt to fight us, but we have every strategic advantage we could ask for, and there is no way to split us up.”Owen grunted in approval. Rapier in hand, he remarked,
“A fortress's got only one weakness, in that it don't move, an' it looks like we conquered it. All's left is t'conquer these guilds.” His comrades did not nod, knowing that despite this advantage, each would have to put all of their strength and their wits into the coming fight to beat monsters like Nolan Waltz, Ammy Silver, and Damian Gerard. Here, more than a hundred feet up, the soldiers of Frenzy Plant would wait for their foes to come to them.
