The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

Raven looked upward at some point, having mostly tuned out guild chat for the majority of her fight. Amelia and Elisha were, in her humble opinion, loafing nearby after she had done all the hard work. Next time she joined a game she'd be the cute healer or the one that walked up and said a magic word like Aura and then was done for the fight. Not that she would let any of that bother her, nope! Raven straightened and was about to say something to all the craftsmen who were starting to get up, or were waiting for Elisha to recover enough mana to cast the lengthy resurrection ritual(assuming nothing interrupted her) when she paused. The hairs on the back of her digital neck were starting to prickle, as it were.

Her head raised and she sniffed the air, staring blankly around with a growing sense of concern. Amelia had been writing in her book, totally zoned out like Amelia do when she seemed to notice Raven's peculiar look.

"The environment feels different." Raven had a weird look on her face because she didn't know what was wrong. Something! Raven looked around vigilantly and picked up the large sword, holding it parallel to the ground at waist height as her alarm grew.

Raven looked over to find Amelia was absolutely no help as usual and was about to make a casual smart-aleck comment which was her speed and style when she realized that it was harder to see Amelia than usual. Raven frowned as her nose upturned in confusion once more even as the sense of 'wrongness' increased.

Raven looked up and her mouth fell open as it suddenly occurred to her what the problem had been for the last minute and a half.

Elisha for her part had happened to look over and see Raven completely floored with her mouth hanging open and her eyes turned up. She looked up on instinct, her gaze was drawn naturally to the same thing that attracted such interest. The fifteen-minute resurrection ritual which she had been casting failed as she stopped waving her arms and channeling the spell. She paid zero attention to the grumbling craftsmen who were excited about returning to their life as the spell gently dissipated and fizzled into nothingness.

Amelia finally noticed the oddness herself and followed their gaze, looking up just in time to see the unnaturally black night sky burst into fire.

Khiafin cast a glance upward anxiously. His eyes had told him there was a problem with the sky after a casual glance up minutes before. He fought the visage on the front line with Gilduirn and several Ominous. They were shoulder to shoulder in a lot of cases with nightmare claws and teeth snapping in front of them, held at bay by Transient and Resident bodies and sheer cussed will in most cases. While it might have been less noticeable everywhere else in the ruined city, on the front line the stars being 'snuffed' out had increased visage teleportation capability to an annoying degree. Now as a huge portion of the sky lit up as if someone had somehow gotten up there and set the entire atmosphere on fire, the opposite was true. The visage advance actually stumbled for several seconds and then, to everyone's amazement, a large tide of the visage who were waiting for their turn to throw themselves forward moved clockwise across the line as if eagerly trying to force their way through at something unseen further into the city.

"What is going on?" Gilduirn yelled. You pretty much had to yell if you weren't using a channel.

"Don't know!" Khiafin grinned. He grinned because his premonition skill wasn't going off, which meant that whatever was happening wasn't dangerous -- at least not to him.

The load on the men, women, and other adventurers on either side of them lessened to the point where everyone started to glance up at the sky. Due in large part to how enormous whatever it was appeared to be, and how it seemed to be on fire for whatever reason, the night which had been pitch black was almost brighter than when it had been daylight now.

"Don't wanna be wherever they are going!" Gilduirn shouted with a laugh, pointing to the visage who were once again clamoring over one another to skirt around the deadly sword wall closer to wherever they were trying to get.

Khiafin, who had no real like for Gilduirn, found himself nodding his head as he watched the insect-like waves of scrabbling claws and teeth.

Around the city, there were many such instances of people looking up and wondering what the hell was going on. Some identified the spell for what it was, even if they didn't know how it was being done. Those who were under it continued staring grimly upward wondering if they should move even while the suddenly illuminated mass of visage threw themselves against the lines more ferociously in some places and less so in others.

Those who were outside of the shadow and could sort of see the general shape of the object were left scratching their heads.

"What do you think that red line points to?" Schulia asked another crafter as they continued to carve posts that would be used to anchor walls that other craftsmen were constructing nearby.

"Or the who!" Her companion laughed, teeth flashing white in a wide smile in the bright light.

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"Holy hell!" Rat cried.

Riddly didn't say anything at all but had briefly opened a channel like he might say something before shutting it back off.

Several others from the Shadow Fall who were nearby also expressed their disbelief.

Some of the people who just happened to be nearby also slackened slightly in their fight to stare in wonder.

Hunter, who had originally been planning on backing up Forsythe stared dumbly at the North-West side of the plaza where Rat and Riddly were stationed, watching in amazement as visage started swarming across the buildings like a fleet of wingless hornets that came blazing out of a hive.

It was obvious, or became obvious after the sky lit up like the air was burning, they had become enemy number one here in this run down ghetto of a courtyard.

Hunter turned and was about to see what Aidan was up to when he ran by her, still, of all things, speaking his spell at the normal pace.

"--the end, when it comes, will be preceded by a wind. A great gale of death that is as much a mixture of the displacement of gas as it is the exhalation of woe from my enemy as they see the beginning of the nothing--" Aidan still held his staff above his head, pointing somewhat indirectly toward the tremendously large, and on fire, rock that was starting to slowly revolve through the atmosphere down toward Lady Unfair. He did spare Hunter an apologetic smile as he passed, and it was no wonder because Lady Unfair was chasing after him as fast as she possibly could in a flowing robe.

White ankles flashed as she screamed and ran forward. Hunter froze momentarily, but not because of some fear effect. Everyone was screaming now. The visage were screaming, her guild was screaming, Lady Unfair was screaming, the sound of swords striking each other was almost overpoweringly loud. As the enemy visage mage Lady Unfair came closer, almost not even seeming to be aware of Hunter, all Hunter could really make out over all the cacophonous noise was "aeth, aeth, aeth."

Hunter began giggling even as she raised her bow. She notched an arrow as the giggling turned into an outright burst of laughter, adding more noise to the discordant notes of absolute chaos that had erupted.

Lady Unfair faltered as an arrow struck her shoulder. She paid zero attention to it, not even trying to dodge or block or swing at all as she chased after Aidan passed Hunter. Hunter obliged her and shot her in the back twice, then started aiming for her legs. To her amazement, the arrows actually deflected near the bottom of the robes as if the clothes themselves were projectile-proof. Hunter's laughter increased as Lady Unfair stumbled and fell into the snow, losing control of a flame ball she was about to release. Instead, she released it into the ground as she fell, the explosion sending her tumbling through the air like a doll. She was on her feet in an instant and lightning and ice and all manner of vile spells flew from her fingers and staff as fast as she could cast them.

Hunter's laughter couldn't be stopped at this point, listening as Aidan just dodged and weaved around the courtyard and Forsythe kept Grimgrieve in the middle. It was too loud, too insane, too chaotic… and even though the fire in the sky lit everything up to brighter than the day, darkness was starting to creep over the courtyard as if a long-shadow were falling over it.

Grimgrieve finally broke through Forsythe's blockade and lunged at Aidan, trying to cross the five meters necessary to hit him. Lady Unfair was too far away now, looking like a weaver's pincushion with all the shafts Hunter had plugged into her. Every present member of Shadow Fall were dealing basically free critical strikes to all the visage who were paying them absolutely no mind as they threw themselves forward.

Dismembered visage were still crawling across the snow, tracing shallow furrows in arcing lines they had drawn with their bodies trying to chase the wizard.

Hunter felt something out of the corner of her eye and lifted her bow, her lips peeled back into joyful laughter as the broadhead of the arrow tracked to where she had seen the movement before dropping the tip and standing still. She stopped laughing and instead smiled beautifully.

"[Aura]."

As the status effect blanketed Forsythe, Aidan, Hunter, Rat, Riddly, and everyone else in the courtyard the running figure in white turned and watched Grimgrieve approach, still speaking even though he didn't move.

For some reason, Hunter could hear him perfectly clear as if he were speaking next to her and not across the way. "--that is what it means to be Order of the White. To make something from the nothingness. As for myself, I bid you, look up and cast your eyes to what I have wrought. I name it, The Raven]."

The pressure from the falling meteorite finally affected everyone underneath it. Stone rattled and trembled and the pressure borne from above caused everyone nearby and many who were not that nearby to have their audio channels pop as if their ears were adjusting to the atmospheric change. As one, all the visage, transients, residents, those in the control room, and everyone watching the stream looked through the eyes of the Silf and witnessed the end of the spell as a whiteness began to bleach out anything distinguishable visually. Before the screens all went white a burst of intense blue light burst out from the falling rock, forming it into several curtains of smaller falling rocks that burned just as brightly, and their shape, when viewed as a whole, was a Raven.

Through the white screen and the deafening pop of the audio channel briefly muting itself to protect users, a moment later there was the loud laughter of Aidan. "Hahahaha! I think I was off by a few meters!"

A truly ridiculous statement considering the meteorite that had coalesced from nothing in the sky had been larger than a soccer stadium.

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Even while he was laughing and everyone was still blind there was one excited voice that popped up over the personal party channel that Amelia, Forsythe, Elisha, Hunter, and Aidan all shared with Raven.

"Wow did you see that!? I think that looked like a Raven!"

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Party Notice:

[Aidan's Staff - Removed as Spell Component. Level 250 Growth Weapon{Legacy weapon} Destroyed.]

[Calculating Experience]

[Calculating Spell Expertise]

[Calculating Notoriety]

[Calculating Fame]

[Calculating Loot]

[Calculating Contribution Points]

[Calculating--]

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Global Announcement

[Divine Intervention] - Though forbidden to interfere with worldly affairs and wars. The children of Aspiria band together warily, forming invisible waves of power to nullify the impact of a catastrophic meteorite impact on the Far North Continent.

Tsunamis settled.

Tectonic plates reset.

Wildlife secured.

Ecology secured.

Atmosphere repaired.

Earth/Ash settled.

[Title Unlocked: Continental Catastrophe]