Cryst, Dykur, Nert, Ovier, Litto and Svnyo had realized the dire situation. None needed a worded description of the class and capacity the caestre of the murder of crows is in.
'We are hopelessly outmatched.' Nert's face kept his illusion of calm.
However, Naph suddenly had a question. He didn't speak it. 'Why was it that I recognized…no, realized that Ovier is pulling us? I have never experiencedsomething like that, have I?'
A crow sat upside down the lower end of the membrane of the unseen force enveloping the seven.
Its deep red eyes trained at Anaphol.
Ovier didn't feel its weight. He looked down only because his lesio felt disturbed to him. It only came right after when he had just felt for any possible disturbances. 'That was not a reaction. It knew. It knows this lesio's weakness.'
His heart beating aloud under his rib cage.
Cryst fear mixed in with panic of abominable size. She had figured out the cata capacity of the caestre. 'If it knows what it could do, forget saving Tarna. All the nearby continents and platinents will have to deal with-'
Another crow came and sat at the membrane right next to Cryst. It tilted its head glaring at Naph.
She chucked two more blue lightning staffs, each going through the same crow next to her. The staffs did not damage it. The crow reformed after each pass of the staff.
"That..that…just how?" Cryst ran tons of theories to come up with how the crow was not getting affected by the blue lightning staffs.
Naph felt his breathing becoming strained. "I-I can't…breath!" His breath worked perfectly fine.
Svnyo was confused by his words too. She could see his breath going in and out of him correctly, yet she could also tell he had spoken the truth. 'How?'
Litto instantly grabbed on Naph's arm, "Do you feel my hand?!" Anaphol nodded. His mouth agape.
Litto's expression darkened. "I think the concept of breathing within you is being-!"
Before anything else, two more crows pierced through the membrane of the unseen force and sat down on Litto's shoulders. Both staring at Naph.
Dykur hadn't seen them until the two crows were sitting on Litto's shoulders. None had seen them coming in. Before anything else happened, the crows on Litto's shoulders multiplied.
They multiplied from two to eight to twenty four then to hundred. Ovier had begun to tightly wrap the unseen force in a complex geometric pattern to only cover the seven of them. But it failed.
The force shattered.
All six from Jhorime were flung afar from Anaphol. Cryst instantly began chucking lightning storm staffs all around her. Ovier a moment prior saw himself just a metre or so away from Anaphol and the next he was over a kilometre away from anyone.
Dykur was confused beyond his understanding. 'How? Just how?' He was surrounded by crows over crows, yet none were staring at him. Each looked in a single direction, the one he felt he came from.
The situations of the other three were similar. Nert, Svnyo and Litto found them too surrounded by crows whose eyes were never looking at them.
Anaphol began falling. Crows after crows flew in circles surrounding him. Flashes of lightning sneaked in time to time. Shockwaves from differing sources slammed into him. His ears bled.
An ethereal surrounded all of them, "I see." Only Anaphol noticed the crows beaks opened at the same moment. But he did not believe he saw it from his own eyes.
Like the image was plastered by someone or something into his mind.
He blinked a lot. His eyes tearing up. His breath uneven.
"Use your cata!" Cryst's voice finally reached Anaphol after her twelfth attempt. She burned her throat screaming through the plasma filled air. Every attempt forcing her to take in more of her own attacks consequences than what she could damage the crows with hers.
Plasma air burned the moisture off every surface in the span of an area originating from the collective center of Anaphol and Cryst. The area? It had the radius of six kilometres. The crows were yet unaffected. Crows were dwarfed by the cloud, the crows dwarfed everyone's attempt at escape.
And Anaphol? His promises, his wills, his memories, his origin. All of it felt crumbling around him. The crows beaks never moved when he saw it with his own eyes, his mind still saw them move.
He could hear Cryst's words. He even understood it. His mouth didn't obey. Shockwaves of thunder and air crashing slammed into each other. Plasma ignited.
The crows finally looked in a direction different than Anaphol. The murder of crows divided their attention unequally among the six humans. Most were on Cryst, some on Dykur, Nert, Ovier and Litto, but none were on Svnyo.
Everyone except her had been able to create something. Something that warranted a reason for the caestre of crows to gaze at their souls.
Anaphol thought of 'ca', instantly stopping at that. His mind wanting nothing more to hit everything that was hurting him. He wasn't falling but that did not concern him.
Nothing happened.
Anaphol thought again and again and again and again. The same syllable. His mind and heart wanting nothing more than to kill each crow around him.
So much hate for a simple caestre. So much for an escape out of an impossible situation.
Crows did not look at him. All were busy staring deeper into every cell and unit of the six Jhorime citizens. That was their fatal flaw.
The crows did not look until it was too late. Anaphol bled from his nails, his eyes, his mouth and his nose. Blood seeped only to be burned instantly. But before anything else could happen, the mirror shards Anaphol had summoned became an existence.
Every single one slammed into each crow around him. Impaling them, bleeding them. The plasma air, the shockwaves, the lightning storms raging and the secretive mist that Svnyo had created seeped into the crows through those mirror shard wounds.
Not all the crows were hit. But it was enough for Ovier. He found out everyone's position because of the origin of each kind of attacks. And he rushed. He rushed to them with no care to his own state.
Ovier's heart to him felt as if it had been dissected and rejoined. He believed it.
Nert felt his entire spine had been inspected. He believed it.
Dykur knew his entire arm had been dissociated and reassembled without him ever feeling the pain of it. He believed it.
Svnyo saw herself becoming mist to only be reassembled as crystals of herself. She believed it.
Cryst remembered her friend Ennet. She did not believe the crisis she had experienced by the crows.
Litto slammed himself into the falling Naph catching him. He overcame his vision.
Ovier had collected everyone before Litto crashed into his unseen force. All of them carried by him out of the cloud faster than the crows could reform. Every crow was hurt burning from the plasma air, shattering from the shockwaves, unbecoming by the mist and the red glowing eyes became black just like how normal crows had.
And thus they escaped above the cloud they had entered. Their new altitude? Two hundred kilometres above the Island of Monite.
Svnyo without being asked or told hugged Anaphol. Her mist escaped from her skin's every tiny oil pore. It enveloped him.
Anaphol, near unconsciousness, was brought back with the healing cata she used.
His first words after a minute were, "Huff, huff, what was that!"
Cryst's eyes unfocused, spoke in a little voice. "That-that was a Destructive Indemnify Crowned mind caestre."
Anaphol and Svnyo had puzzling and horrified looks respectively as both asked at the same instant.
"What?"