Southern Plains (Farmland)

As the life is sapped from the ground around the Wyld, its movements begin to become more furious and frenetic. The hordes largely withdraw for the moment, only a fraction of the seething mass remaining on each front, but it is not with the intent of stopping their assault. Instead, all eyes, all blades, all vines turn toward Daedalus, at the moment the very epitome of the reason the Wyld wishes to destroy sapience. Taking the life of the land, spreading disease and pestilence, using high magics as a crutch to destroy all that is precious. The man must be annihilated. The vines about the edge of The Wyld's expansion suddenly vanish underground, sucked up into the earth. An explosive tremor heralds their return in a wide circle about Daedalus, tearing apart the earth and rending what greenery exists to dust so as to halt the spread of the blight before whipping out at Daedalus himself, attempting to puncture flesh and turn him to its own devices. Immune to nature and death magics as it is, The Wyld is unaffected, and hopes to stop the blight as quickly as it begins. Andraste herself, held aloft by her wings of black, tears toward the other mage with a cry of anger, an explosive gout of purple flames pouring from her obsidian-tipped staff as she points it accusingly at the mage.

Jun, for now, is ignored, and allowed to do what she will with the beasts of nature. As disgusting as it is to see a sapient bending nature for her own gain is, it's more disgusting to see the wholesale destruction of the land for the sake of temporary victory, and the hordes converge upon Daedalus' location. The wolves and wargs arrive first and gallop toward him with reckless abandon, jumping with gaping jaws intent on rending flesh from bone. The shambling masses aren't far behind, either, many of them with weapons raised in the air in driven anger, shrieking with an unnerving shrillness that chills one to the bone. If Daedalus does not change position, it will be nigh impossible to not be overrun, regardless of his power, and it is already unlikely that he'll be able to escape on foot. Hope lies only in disengaging through translocation.

Daedalus would suddenly sense several lights out of the corners of his eyes.

As the Wyld's predators beared down on Daedalus, they were met by several large, ghostly wildebeests and horses which charged right into them. These strange creatures did not appear to be solid, but rather consisted of light and fire energy, giving them a pinkish hue. They attempted to headbutt and stomp their hooves into the approaching hoard to buy Daedalus time to escape.

"What the hell?" Daedalus might hear someone yelling from a distance behind him. He'd see a couple of confused mounted archers, and their paused animals looking at Daedalus and... nodding? Then the archers would start riding off again. The number of animals corresponded to the number of spirits protecting him.

Daedalus would sense a trace of Jun's energy within the ethereal creatures.

As Andraste charged, she'd be met by blasts of arcane bolts coming from the treeline behind Daedalus. "Look out!" A feminine voice would call out to him from behind. It seemed the Land-Tiller elves had spotted his unconventional strategy and wanted to help him survive.

The large, lumbering figures coming from the north were getting bigger...

Jun sensed a presence, not of Vaelar, but of the manticore. This caused her to look up from her praying state just in time to see an old lover make his return.

Her lips parted with surprise. She turned to look at him as well as the beast. She had to make sure she wasn't going crazy.

Then a baby deer would headbutt him on his ankle.

Her surprise turned into a demure little smirk, followed by a wink towards Vaelar. But she didn't say anything yet. Instead she turned to deal with the task at hand. She could see Daedalus' light show from miles away. And she knew she didn't want to be upshown by her rival.

She looked to one side of the natural bastion she had form, then the other, and gave a serene nod to both.

"Let's do it." She raised her hand up, and Resonance appeared over her head. She grabbed it, and as soon as she did the sword erupted into white hot flames. She held it up just for a moment, then brought it swinging forward.

"Get'em."

Vaelar would have to cover his ears to survive the simultaneous cacophony of roars, whistles, shrieks, and hisses of hundreds of large animals, thousands of small ones, and countless insects and creepy crawlies.

The most visible effect was hundreds of ethereal animal forms being cast by their respective creatures. These forms seemed to leap out of the hearts of the creatures and rush forward like an army of ghosts. Phantoms of pure light and fire, these creatures would collide with the Wyld, headbutting, biting, stomping and gnashing their way through anything dark and evil, and then detonating with a burst of holy flames. These forms were not made of nature energy themselves, but were a power gifted to the creatures through a synergistic effect with Jun. Jun had absorbed the energy and used it to become a living wand, a weapon used by the earth itself through a mystical contract. This was her ultimate power that she could only use during the most desperate of occasions, the most powerful ability she had learned from Va'nei.

Of course, the flood of fiery beasts was just the beginning. Even more dramatic would be the flock of dive bombing eagles, hawks, swallows, doves, crows, and many other species just above the edge of the Wyld. Their auras made them seem like phoenixes rather than mundane fowl. Just before they reached the Wyld they would pull up, but their auras kept going, showering the Wyld with thousands of missiles of avian fire. The explosions could be heard from the other side of the Wyld even through the TERRA's ring of fire, letting Daedalus know that his distraction had been put to good use. The darkened sky, filled with empowered fowl, also made a nice contrast against the tempestuous sea of fire forming below.

The insects and plants played their role as well. The swarms formed a collective consciousness that swam through the air like a great glowing cloud of fire flies. Like the other creatures, they unleashed holy, fiery spectres forward, and a hail of stars flowed into the Wyld, eating into its vines like hungry locusts.

Finally, the vines and roots of the earth rose up like writhing wings on both sides of Jun's little anti-Wyld. They tore the earth apart into great chunks. But these chunks looked a bit different from regular earth, as did the auras of the plants; both became emerald and crystalline. The vines and roots catapulted this holy earth forward, and as it landed among the forms of the Wyld it would shatter into deadly shrapnel, painfully burning and sapping all things of malevolent intent.

Jun watched the holy carnage with a resolute look. She may not have been a chaos mage, but she would do her damnedest to punish the Wyld for all the suffering it had caused.

Like palisades rising up from the ground, great, redwood-sized vines begin to sprout from the earth, one after the other as they encircle what territory the Wyld has yet infected. Jun's animals' attacks will be met with a wall of thorns and slick plant matter, and collide with vines so tall and thick that whatever fires spring up are immediately doused by the gushing wetness of the vines' xylem bursting. The attack is effective enough -- a decent chunk of the vines are immolated before the Wyld's defences are shored up -- but most of the damage has been negated by the massive wall of dark natural energy and thick, bark-like vine flesh.

As Daedalus' attack hits, the hordes are directed to spread out to avoid the worst of the explosions, and do so with otherworldly efficiency and coordination. Those who are affected are severed from the collective in the blink of an eye, and the hosts are given a brief, painful, and terrifying last moment of clarity before exploding outward. The horrifying yet short screams of unpossessed men and women echo throughout the plains, until the spell's effects abate. Similar to Jun's attacks, the rest of the beams are met with a wall of repulsive energy that refracts and dampens the effects of the spell, preventing it from affecting the great palisades. Andraste herself envelops her figure with her smoggy wings, the beams warping about her to strike the newly formed wall behind her. The hordes withdraw as the spell finally runs its course, the great palisades of vines opening up for mere moments to let the shambling masses through. Andraste, however, stays, thumping her staff down upon the ground as she gazes over the destruction with a grimace.
"Is this the best the sapient races have to offer? Pitiful," she hisses, her voice a cacophony of whispers and shouts, as if every infected is speaking as one.

Aia's attempt at a slash and burn is doused in the same way that the Wyld has been combating the Land Tillers' fire spells, vines bursting with liquid over the flames and negating their effect. At this point, the forests that the Valkyries are attempting to burn have been completely overrun, and so the loss of those vines is negligible compared to the whole. Andraste gestures to the sky with her onyx-tipped staff as she senses the incoming Valkyries, and dark stormheads abruptly fill the air above the newly-created fortress, crackling with sickly purple lightning, unnaturally black and gloomy. They begin to descend and encompass the Wyld's new fortifications, swirling about and pouring over the area, falling almost gently in a grand semicircle just outside the viney wall. Any caught within the massive circular wall of vines will find themselves unable to retreat, swarmed by angry crows or overcome by whipping tendrils, as a massive stormy barrier of smoke and smog encapsulates the area, the great crackling dome obscuring it from view. Even light magic and flames cannot penetrate the barrier, reinforced as it is by an ancient and unbelievably powerful magic, the very same that contributed so greatly the the collapse of the world once before.

Any living beings who attempt to enter will curiously find themselves able to do so, although doing so will almost certainly mean a quick yet painful assimilation. Andraste finally retreats herself, leaping over the wall and vanishing into the smoggy veil. An unearthly silence falls over the battlefield, the only sounds the occasional caw of a crow and the sizzling of charred plantlife. It seems, for now, that the Wyld has been repelled, shored up as it is behind its new wall. The efforts of the Tillers and Daedalus took a considerable chunk of its forces, and it will take time to reassemble an invasion force. This time must be spent sparingly, however, as it will surely return in force.

The firey specters fought tooth and nail until they were depleted, and their fires gradually died out.

Aia and Vaelar would notice that the animals, once single-minded, started to wander off as if some great concert had ended. Oddly enough, the predators would leave the prey alone, as if they had struck a temporary truce. Meanwhile, the plant life began to recede, the great holy trees wither and dry up, and the swarms of insects fly off into parts unknown, but certainly away from the Wyld.

Once the dark energy enveloped the Wyld, Jun decided this was a good time for her knees to wobble and for her to fall flat on her behind. So she went ahead and did so. The mighty Resonance clattered to the ground, the azure sword depleted of energy. She looked on with a mix of horror and academic curiosity. She went ahead and pet that baby deer that had headbutt Vaelar earlier.

"Well... offensively, I think we've done all we could. I gave it everything I had. If that attack won't stop it nothing will. Same goes for Daedalus." She sighed, her head wavering slightly as she leaned back, one knee raised. But she did give Aia an optimistic, if exhausted grin. "But I think we at least showed it we're not the same pushovers we were centuries ago." She looked back to the Wyld. "The next thing we should do is set up a perimeter. We have to quarantine this place and prevent anything living from getting close to that dark barrier, both people and animal. I'm guessing we wounded it badly enough that it needs time to recover, so it's turtling in there for now, like a wounded beast."

Off in the distance, the TERRA network's attacks were winding down. Holy fireballs were still raining down on the Wyld's shield, but they were doing so with much less frequency. All they really wanted now was to prevent the Wyld from getting too comfortable. But the TERRA's three great beacons in the sky were shining bright as ever, particularly the one that linked to the Pheonix Temple. They were definitely planning something... Likewise, the remaining Land-Tiller forces were retreating, already forming a perimeter of their own accord. Great, lumbering figures still approached from the north, but they were slow-moving and still needed time to arrive. Their footsteps barely registered as the faintest of rumbles for those with gifted hearing.

Jun squinted, and thought she recognized a familiar wilderbeest among the mounted archers. She would seem relieved.

"While it's gathering strength, we also need to get ready for round two. Anything holy works on it, but certain non-holy elements will make it stronger. Stick with fire and light. Oh god." She struggled to get up, but her body was woozy, and she would likely recline on Vaelar for support. "I get the feeling that once Alden arrives with the sealing stone, we'll have to go on the offense again. So, again, in summary, focus on quarantining it while getting ready for another offensive push."

Jun gratefully wrapped her arm around Vaelar's shoulders as she struggled to stay standing. "I'm alright, I'm alright." She mumbled reassuringly. A bit of optimism spread through her veins as her addled brain slowly started to assimilate the wonderful news that Vaelar had finally returned!

"Don't worry, you've left me far more exhausted than this." She murmured salaciously in his ears so that Aia wouldn't hear. He'd feel her fingers curling weakly against his pauldron, her other hand propping the rest of herself up by her knee. She was smiling, but pale and sweating. Such was the price of casting a spell that would have single-handedly obliterated a battalion of undead.

"So... I was in Isra when I got a call from the Citadel. We had a meeting and they explained that it's some kind of demigodic entity. It hates sapient life. It wants to revert the natural world to a primal state, without any intelligence, just instinct. It chose the Expanse so it could feed off all the natural energy here, and use it to assimilate all the life forms. It's only vulnerable to fire and light. It just eats everything else." She leered at it, as if that would somehow damage it further. "It's a real pain in the nether regions. We've slowed it down but, we're waiting on my friend Alden to find a sealing stone to defeat it. And even then I don't think it'll make it easy for us."

When the world stopped spinning, Jun finally gave Vaelar a proper hug. Her temple pressed against his plate armor, and her grip strengthened. "Where have you been?" She pleaded softly.

Jun had almost forgotten Vaelar's penchant for chivalrous, romantic speech. She was genuinely surprised he hadn't referred to her as "my lady" yet. Oh wait, nevermind.

But all the same, she needed a familiar face right now, and Vaelar's was more than adequate. She actually felt somewhat guilty. Now wasn't exactly the best time to, er, celebrate in such a physiological manner. But if what the man was saying was true, he had likely gone for quite some time without any chance to celebrate. And of course, he had to come back to his girlfriend's home facing the poison ivy apocalypse.

"As much as I want to..." She gently pushed him off. She was just able to stand now. "I need to gather as much energy as I can. And well, what your thinking of would probably kill me at this point." She gave a hybrid grimace and grin, and winked. Seriously, the stars couldn't have aligned to make a reunion both so equally wonderful and fraught with disappointment.

There was one last dehydrated tree remaining, and she carefully stepped back and leaned on it. She slid down, groaned as she got into a sitting, meditative position, and took a deep breath. "Come sit next to me. When the time comes, I might be able to give you a taste of this magic business." She winked again, and then gave herself a questioning look as she wondered if her last statement counted as innuendo of some kind.

Just as Ulfang stepped into his tent, he would hear a small mammalian squeak coming from just outside, getting louder and louder. He'd turn around just in time to see a fox-sized creature, a fruit bat, flutter into the tent and begin frantically circling. Attached to its waist was a belt, with several notes rolled in little straps interspersed around its circumference. The fruit bat would eventually calm itself and find purchase on the tent's support poles. Its feet would grip the pole tightly and it would twitch its body a bit to steady itself. 

From there it would stare at the commander with its intense orange eyes. Its nose twitched slightly as it got a feel for the commander's presence.

The bat licked at Ulfang's fingertips with curiosity as he removed the first note from its little holster. The writing was rather small, but neatly written with a dark black ink for clarity. It read the following:

To Commander Ulfang,

On behalf of our people, we extend our deepest gratitude in joining our cause. The Land-Tiller's Expanse is unwavering in its commitment to defeat the entity known as the Wyld, and will count anyone who assists in ridding the land of this blight a brother in arms.

Sangilak of the Saskatoon, Raynor of the Celadine, and Lai Ban of the Dittany have agreed to full cooperation with your forces in a coordinated assault on the Wyld. This means that the Earth Titans of the North, the Mounted Mage Corps of the West and the TERRA Defense Network of the Skies will all be in communication with your forces and will assist you in any way possible. We also ask that you be ready to assist them should the time come.

Unfortunately, Ying-Na of the Acacia has declined to participate in a coordinated attack with your forces, due to the already severe casualties the Mounted Archer Corps has sustained in the past. Rohak of the Dittany will also not be coordinating with your assault for similar reasons. However, their forces will be available as back-up in the event of a necessary retreat.

You are probably aware of the cultural baggage that the undead carries to our people. Please treat with patience those who may express fear or hatred of your forces, especially young children and the elderly. There are some among the latter who have been traumatized by undead forces in their youth. Please deal with them tactfully and compassionately if you are able to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message. Long live Van'ei. Long live Gaia.

Ukhai!

Elder Havador, Elected Tribal Leader of the Land-Tiller's State

After giving Ulfang a chance to finish the note, the fruit bat would deposit two more notes from its holster onto the surface below. They were much smaller in size, and shorter. The first read:

PS: Your army smells. I've instructed the local children to throw tomatoes as the lot of them as soon as the Wyld has been defeated. Please allow them to do so. It will go a long way to improving relations between our people.

-Ying-Na of the Acacia, Leader of the Mounted Archer Corps

PSS: Did I mention your army smells?

PSSS: You suck.

The second read: 

PS: Don't forget to tip the bat. He likes fruit and bugs.

-Huata of the Dittany, Head Human Delegate of the Druidic Enclave.