They were completely silent as they climbed out of the pillars to enter the rift. Each member of the team knew the seriousness of the situation and exactly what they had to do. Silene had come up with a strategy that they believed in, but returning to exactly the same lanes where they had lost so badly with only one life was a challenge to their determination.

Walking up the middle lane, Palinus felt a heavy pressure in his chest. His breathing was ragged as his mind concocted all the ways he could fail. They suspected that the opposition team had scouted them the last time and were relying on them choosing the same matchup, as it had worked well for them previously. He worried that they would change it up, and it would ruin their strategy; their team seemed as flexible as the Cinderborn.

Hands shaking as he stood under the tower and eyeballed the brush, he was supposed to act scared as he waited, but it wasn't much effort to appear scared; he was terrified. They had gone into the first rift, not knowing that it was hardcore and their lives were on the line, now that he was willingly entering one, it was a different story.

Suddenly, there was a rustling as the slinger strode out of the brush on the right side of the lane. He was joined by the spearman and a stoneman carrying an enormous two-handed sword. They jeered at Palinus as the swordsman and spearman stalked off to the left.

"I just spotted the swordsman and spearman exiting the brush in the middle lane with the slinger. The other two are headed towards the top forest." Palinus reported.

"They are arrogant," Seline replied, "good. We just spotted the same two bottom, so we are on here."

Gulping as he followed the minions to the middle of the lane, he focused on his part in this and selected his new ars.

The slinger, as expected, moved in to start pushing; he didn't fear Palinus in the slightest and knew he would win a trade. He didn't expect Palinus to move in aggressively against him, but was quick to ready an attack. When Palinus began to cast his ars the slinger instantly replied by selecting his own ars. As his whip came down in an attack he could see mirrored, Palinus smiled; he had won the first exchange.

*Thunk*

The stone smacked against his forehead and stunned him for a moment. It would have been a smart play if he had triggered the minion aggro; he was within range of several, but with his new whip attack doing no damage, the unintelligent stone minions didn't care.

While the stone minions continued to bash away at the Erulean minions with their stone clubs and bolts of jagged stone, the weird-looking pink-skinned minions on Palinus's side had a different reaction. As if they were enraged by the stone that struck the avatar looking over them, they swarmed the slinger, two ranged minions, and a Melee minion, targeting the ma,n who seemed perplexed as he was forced to retreat.

The stun effect passed, and Palinus cleared his head with a shake as he grinned at the slinger. The [Burning] effect ticked away to add salt to the wounds inflicted by the minions to five Palinus, a fifty hp lead already. Even better, the erulean minions being distracted and moved out of place meant that the lane was going to be moving towards Palinus.

His grin widened as he saw the slinger noticing the conundrum. The man scratched at his blonde facial hair as he hefted his sling and reported something to his team. Winding up the sling and moving in to start taking out the ranged minions, he committed early to trying to force the wave to reset, it was also a way to force Palinus to race him in order to secure level one first, but Palinus didn't take the bait. He knew exactly what to do as he focused on taking the essentia on offer and only doing enough damage to prevent the lane from resetting.

It was only five seconds later that Palinus's Wick Lash ars fell off cooldown, conveniently that was only slightly shorter than the [Burning] effect lasted. As the slinger committed to attacking another ranged minion Palinus took a quick step forward to put himself in range and lashed the slinger with his ars again. The line of fire across the slinger's shoulder stopped smoking for a fraction of a second before another lash of dark red flame struck the same spot to run its course again.

Grimacing in frustration more than pain, the slinger didn't stop attacking despite the damage ticking up against him. The stubbornness telegraphed the man's intention to race for level two and a similar plan to gank him from the bushes with the spearman's controlling technique.

Giggling to himself, Palinus almost couldn't wait. By the time the 3rd wave hit he had a pretty significant wave of stoneman minions stacked up against him and he decided to show off the other feature of his new ars as he lashed out not against the slinger but against one of the ranged minions, the little stone golem's head igniting in a line like he had a flaming mohawk.

Lashing out at the ranged minions beside it focused on evening out the fight. The problem with a stalled wave was that his minions were being taken out too quickly, the majority of the damage not being done by the slinger, but by the eight ranged minions still alive on the stoneman side, with only five on his own side. To keep the wave from resetting, he simply needed to do more damage. He couldn't do it with the whip lash of his vitis, but as he lashed out with his ars a second time the secondary effect of Wick Lash made itself known and the [Burning] effect on the one minion became a [Burning] effect on five in range.

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It also managed to hit the slinger, which pleased Palinus even more.

The ability was perfect for his situation, and it made him wonder about how this came about. It seemed like the nexuses were sentient; maybe they had some control over what dropped in the rifts? Censor Caelus had also been talking about him going up north to get a couple of calculii; maybe he had a hand in Palinus being here and receiving it. Thinking about that sort of backroom dealing made Palinus think of Servius; he wasn't quite ready to think of him as a father. The man had been pretty insistent on the importance of this Rift. The more he considered it, the more he was convinced there was some truth to there being a conspiracy at play. It upset him to think of himself as a pawn in a bigger game, but ultimately, he supposed he would rather be an alive and powerful pawn than a dead one.

His thoughts were spiraling as the anticipation of the plan potentially working was starting to grow. The fourth wave was hitting, and this was likely when they would both hit level two. This meant it was nearly time for a gank, and he was ahead by two hundred health points and sitting pretty just outside his turret.

Nervous energy flooded him as he intentionally walked towards the brush the spearman had launched his attack in the last rift. he wanted the man to be there, but it was hard to make his body ready to take that sort of punishment.

The essentia was building up in his body as he paused a moment. This was it.

Lashing out with his ars to blast an area of [Burning] effect on as many minions as possible he felt his body absorb a mote of essentia that filled his avatar up to the level threshold and selected his shield ars. He could sense the spearman's essentia as the man exited the brush and the stunning stone on its way to slow him.

Shielding the damage completely from the stone, the smoke from Smouldering Wisp swirled around him. Greedily sucking up the smoke from the [Burning] minions and the slinger the ars replenished it's shield before the second stone could arrive. But the first stone had done its job despite its lack of damage as Palinus lost consciousness for a fraction of a second, his feet not cooperating as he ran desperately towards his tower.

He managed another step before the second stone struck, losing consciousness again, but still on near full health with his shield absorbing the blow. Mentally, Palinus prepared himself as soon as he gathered his faculties. He staggered another three steps towards the tower, and he prepared himself for what was about to happen.

"YAH." The spearman jabbed him in the side. The wickedly barbed head lodged deep into his flesh and scratched gouges in his avatar's ribcage.

Grimacing in pain, Palinus was glad the effect of the stun diminished on repeated use as he had barely been tugged two steps away by the spearman before he was able to resist. Rather than devoting his full energy to retreating, he lifted his vitis to lash out at the spearman. Using the [Burning] effect applied by Smouldering Wisp to do some extra damage to the man.

With longer than he expected before the next attack from the slinger Palinus took a half step backwards this shield absorbing some of the damage of resisting the spearmans ars before it popped, taxed too much despite the number of [Burning] targets. He used his Wisk lash ars to attack the spearman. The half dozen stoneman melee minions in range, lighting up with his flame effect as he tried to do as much damage as he could.

Losing a fraction of a second of consciousness to another stone from the slinger, Palinus was starting to take some significant damage.

Palinus 322/623 | Level 1

Flagellant / Smoke Mage

Playing tug of war with the spear lodged in his ribcage, Palinus struggled as he finally managed to pull the Spearman under the Tower.

*An Enemy has been Slain*

The message stunned the two enemies attacking him. While they had been looking over their shoulder and waiting for Rufian to arrive, he had been busy in the top lane. It looked like their plan had paid off. Now he just had to survive his role as guileless bait.

He lost his faculties for the barest fraction of a second, the stones having barely any effect by this stage, and he returned to tugging the spearman under the tower with his own ars.

Yelling something Palinus couldn't understand at the spearman, the slinger was starting to get agitated. The spearman yelled something back as he continued to try to pull Palinus out of the turret's range, but he wasn't making any ground as the tower bolt blasted him in the face and began to spool up another attack.

Palinus 241/623 | Level 1

Flagellant / Smoke Mage

It was doing considerable damage fighting the spear ars, but as long as Palinus kept the spearman within the tower's range it would be a better than even trade. Recognising this with a scowl the spearman finally released his ars, choosing to step away before the second tower bolt could hit him.

Grinning in triumph, Palinus didn't let the man go easy as he started attacking the spearman as quickly as he could, blasting him with vitis and topping up the [Burning] effect from a nearby melee minion.

Finally, out of the left side of the lane, help arrived.

"YAAHHH!" The battlecry that Rufian had adopted as he used Lock-on was little more than a bellowing scream, but its inelegant brutality broke a savage smile across Palinus's lips. It was their turn.

The spearman tried to run towards the brush again, but this time he was too far away. Rufian struck with a thump and started punching the spearman's kidneys as he tried to run for the cover of the tall grass.

Rufian and Palinus's combinations were quickly stacking up as the spearman's health took a nosedive. They weren't quite going to do enough damage to finish him off before they reached the tall grass and everyone could see it. As the slinger stepped towards the brush to cover his ally Palinus could see the hesitation on his face, he was on less than half health and the spearman was nearly dead, while Rufian was mostly healthy.

The moment came as the spearman finally reached the tall grass and Rufian didn't hesitate to plunge in afterwards. In a move that was probably the right thing to do the slinger stopped mid step to the brush and turned to run.

A moment later the expected notification chimed through the forest.

*An Enemy has been Slain*

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