by Frank Morin
Oh, no.
Hamish shouted over the speakstone linked to the Albatross, hoping she had it with her. “What happened?”
No response.
He un-holstered his tiny personal speedsling and unleashed all of its three hundred hornets in a desperate, vain attempt to distract the monster.
Lady Briet continued spinning, turning away from the nightmare plunging over her. She tried throwing the weapon, but her angle was all wrong.
The great hawk struck like a lightning bolt. Lady Briet screamed and tried vainly to raise her hands in defense, but the gesture was pitiful and useless. That terrible beak plunged right over her head and snapped closed across her waist, severing her body in a spray of blood. A second quick snap, and Lady Briet was gone.
Hamish screamed in rage and horror. Despite all his efforts, he’d failed. Such brutal, violent death rocked him with grief and rage. Such a noble, brave woman should not be killed like that.
The giant hawk snapped its wings out and banked toward Hamish, its dead, red eyes locking on him, clearly intending to make another kill.
Hamish lacked missiles or speedslings to hit it from a distance. His Second Skin was destroyed so he couldn’t simply fly into it and rip it apart.
It seemed more satisfying this way.
As the monster swept toward him, its deadly, bloody beak gaping wide to engulf him, Hamish screamed defiance and activated blind coal.
That strange slippery feeling engulfed him as he slipped right through the onrushing creature. Its beak snapped around him and would have severed his spine and ripped him in half like it had Lady Briet, but somehow he managed to slip through. He grimaced at the sight of her dismembered corpse. Then he flashed into the creature’s innards, a huge cavernous space filled with boiling fires.
Hamish dropped four diorite darts.
He swept through the rest of the creature an eyeblink later, sliding back into the open skies just before his blind coal exhausted. He activated his personal shielding as well as a secondary shielding layer of water over that.
A heartbeat later, those diorite darts exploded, rupturing the monster’s skin and blasting it apart as its fiery innards erupted in a geysering explosion of crimson destruction. The flames washed over Hamish, flashing the protective layer of water to steam and battering his quartzite shields so hard they rattled and almost collapsed. The brutal impact hurtled him five hundred feet higher.
It rattled him and probably cracked at least one of the granite leaves of his protective armor, but he suffered no serious damage. He activated thrusters at the apex of his flight and glanced back at the dissipating destruction of his enemy.
The explosion had vaporized what was left of Lady Briet and Hamish saluted the cloud of smoke. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get there in time, but I avenged you.”
He turned back toward the battle, suddenly feeling empty. He needed to return to Battalion One to rearm and figure out what to do next, but even with obsidian enhancing his mind, his thoughts felt sluggish, his enthusiasm wilted by the terrible deaths he’d witnessed.
Jean spoke through the speakstone, her voice like the rising of the sun. “Hamish? Are you all right? We lost contact with Lady Briet and things are going badly on the ground.”
“Lady Briet and the Albatross are lost,” Hamish said, his voice sounding hoarse, his throat tightening as he spoke the words. Jean whispered softly, and Hamish had no doubt she was offering her heartfelt grief. The woman had been a great leader. He heard over the line a wail of grief and only then remembered Gisela would have heard him report the death of her mother.
Her grief stoked his anger and he accelerated, but not back toward the Battalion. That fight was well in hand. No, Hamish dove for the battlefield far below. “Have you fired the obsidian burst?”
“Preparing it now. The aerial assault created some delays.”
“Tell me when it’s ready. I’m going in.”
44
The Weirdest Catch-the-devil Game of All Time
Connor had to help Evander, but first he needed a working body. He had managed to not think about the horror of losing his arms, but it was there like a snarling pedra in the back of his mind. If fleshcrafting waned before he completed the work, he might die. Worse, he might live, survive as a cripple, unable to fight, unable to do anything.
What would Verena think of him as a broken, disarmed cripple? Would she leave him? Would she stay?
He wasn’t sure what would be worse. The thought of losing her was like a blade of fire in his heart, but the thought of condemning her to a life of misery, forced to care for an invalid husband filled him with cold dread.
No, he would not accept either outcome. So he redoubled his efforts to apply the torrent of healing power and his fleshcrafting to mend shattered bones and rebuild his broken body. He bound the healing energy to his organs and bones and let it get to work while he focused on the trickier aspects of reconnecting nerves and spine and rebuilding his bruised mind.
Evander-giant pounded its chest with all four enormous arms and charged. It was a good sign that he had withstood the queen’s influence so far, but Connor doubted that even with the link to that special sculpted stone he would last long alone.
Good thing Connor didn’t have to move to access his affinities. If he had time to focus a hundred percent on the process, he could heal himself faster, but Evander-giant would probably die. So he divided his focus on fleshcrafting and reaching for the elements to help.
Evander-giant lunged, swinging two giant fists that could crush palaces. The queen caught one, not even looking strained by the effort of bash fighting with a monster ten times her size. She drew water out of the air and slapped Evander-giant on the side of the head, knocking him stumbling.
Through Earth, he sensed the titanic battle unfolding between them as they continued pummeling each other. She was cheating of course, not only fighting him with earth, but striking at him with water and fire. Their visible battle was only a tiny fraction of the fight raging between them, though. Their wills collided through the ground like invisible titans, and the land all around shook and rumbled ominously.
Despite his incredible strength and elemental fury, Evander-giant was slowly being driven back. He showed no fear, and Connor doubted he could feel fear in that form.
So Connor jumped into the fray. Figuratively speaking, since most of his bones were still broken. He seized the waters the queen was slinging and managed to deflect them temporarily. He also sucked the heat out of the flames she was trying to wrap around the elfonnel’s head, making the crimson corona virtually harmless.
Queen Dreokt glanced back at him and actually saluted. “You’re supposed to be hiding in that broken mind of yours.”
He tapped serpentinite and cast words back at her since he still couldn’t talk. “Like a couple of my mentors liked to say, thinking is for officers. It can be overrated.” Then he struck again with serpentinite, using the paralyzing frequency of sound in an attempt to immobilize her long enough for Evander-elfonnel to stomp her flat.
This time she was ready, deflecting the attack away. Connor muttered one of Verena’s favorite curses to himself.
She struck at his mind again, but it was his turn to show he was prepared. She lacked that overwhelming rage that had temporarily given her the advantage.
He deflected her mental barrage and cast the thought back at her, “Flowers please the eye and the nose, while breadsticks please the palate, but stinky cheese pleases none but grumpy old ladies.”
She actually grimaced, so Connor again flung at her all the Sentry speak he remembered, and added as many new creations as he could, while they battled with water and fire and she fought the elfonnel with the earth.
For a moment he and Evander held her off, their two-pronged attack and Connor’s distracting words keeping her off balance just enough to prevent her from dealing a critical blow. At the same time Connor continued frantically trying to rebuild his body. She would have comple
ted the entire process long since, but he was he was too new to the whole rebuild-yourself-after-getting-ripped-apart challenge.
He needed another minute before he could use his legs again and rise to face her. Fighting from a prone position seemed wrong though, so he tapped a little earth, raised an earthen hammock to hold him, and set it gently rocking from side to side.
When she glanced at him, he wished his hands worked and he had a cold beverage to sip. That would really annoy her.
Queen Dreokt glared at him, then abruptly shot across the earth like an arrow, aimed straight at Evander-giant. It reached for her and Connor silently urged it on. If the monster could lift her in those enormous hands, Connor would do everything in his power to block her defenses long enough for the monster to rip her arms and legs off. See how much she enjoyed getting dismembered in the middle of a death battle.
Instead of striking at the giant or again trying to catch his grasping hands, Queen Dreokt lunged forward into a dive. The move caught the giant by surprise and she slipped between his grasping hands, plunging straight into its torso.
“No fair!” Connor tried to shout, but only managed a gurgling mumble from his fast-healing throat. The shocking move was more disgusting than just unfair. He grimaced at the thought of someone climbing inside his torso during a fight.
Evander-giant stumbled backward, pawing at its own eighty-foot chest and stomach where the queen had disappeared. Harley had dressed herself in giant elemental suits during the battle of Raufarhofn as well as the battle of Merkland, but Connor had never imagined dressing oneself in an elfonnel. Especially when that elfonnel didn’t want you in there.
The giant staggered, and through his earth senses Connor located the queen. She was climbing through the monster’s huge torso, closing on that sculpted stone. Connor’s heart skipped a beat, and he’d just barely gotten it beating again. If she could seize that sculpted stone, she could wrench it from Evander’s control and no doubt destroy him or seize control of his elfonnel.
If she managed that, Connor wasn’t sure what would happen to Evander. Would he be lost in the elfonnel forever? Or ejected from the elfonnel’s backside as the queen took over? Or mind-wiped to become her willing slave?
The sculpted stone began to move, sliding away from the queen through the giant’s body. She gave chase, but Evander’s elfonnel fought against her, striving to hold her back.
It wasn’t enough. Connor was not sure how to help. He tried reaching into the elfonnel with his own earth senses to pull against the queen’s legs, hoping to drag her out, but the elfonnel’s body acted as an insulator and he lacked influence. Definitely not enough to slow her.
Moving that sculpted stone around was a good idea, but even Connor could see it was only a matter of time before Queen Dreokt won that version of catch-the-devil.
Evander changed tactics. Spikes of earth began erupting out of the ground around his giant, plunging into its torso in a remarkable display of self-inflicted defiance. The spikes plunged deep, all aimed at Queen Dreokt.
It seemed the unexpected move actually caught her by surprise. One spike plunged between her ribs, and Connor threw the thought at her, “Ha! How do you like getting impaled?”
He wished Evander-giant could move those spikes around inside of her like she was doing to him, but even piercing her body helped. Another spike plunged through both of her thighs. Even with fleshcrafting, that probably hurt.
Secured by those spikes, Evander-giant temporarily halted her pursuit of the sculpted stone. Unfortunately, she recovered quickly, severing the ends of the spikes and deflecting others away.
She cast an angry thought back at Connor as she renewed her singular pursuit of the sculpted stone. “You should be helping me, foolish boy. If our regenerative powers expire before we restore a worthy servant to the convergence point, you’ll never finish healing.”
He was working on it as fast as he could, but he wasn’t nearly as experienced as she was. He needed a little more time. If Evander didn’t mind plunging a dozen deadly earthen spikes into himself, who was Connor to ignore the opportunity? He seized water and fire, wrapping them together with the sound of Verena’s favorite battle cry, and plunged that spike into the giant.
It sank deep, and for a second pierced the queen’s left side. He felt the connection, felt her skin part and the elements press in, destroying flesh. He tried pouring in more heat, but she severed the contact a second later. That close to herself, she held the advantage. He was striking from a distance, trying to press the attack through the insulating barrier of the elfonnel.
Still, that tiny contact had slowed her for a moment. Bolstered by that tiny success, Connor redoubled his attack, creating spikes of different combined elements and striking from every side. If the spikes plunging into the elfonnel hurt Evander-giant, Connor couldn’t sense it. The giant stood immobile, pierced by dozens of spikes of different elements, and it seemed its entire focus was on keeping the sculpted stone from the queen.
She fought off Connor’s assault, but he tried striking at her with sensory deprivation, stilling, and even tried creating a mirage inside of the beast of a huge sculpted scone about to consume her head.
That almost got her. She recoiled for a second before destroying the illusion. In that second, he struck her twelve more times with other elements.
It didn’t do any good. He might be new at restoring himself, but she was an expert. How many times had she been wounded, dismembered, or otherwise mostly dead? She drew upon all that experience and healed herself as quickly as Connor could hurt her. He was still healing himself too, and started worrying that by injuring her so much, they might consume the lingering fleshcrafting before he finished.
With a sinking feeling of dread, he realized their plan was not working. Maybe he could get over there and take the sculpted stone from Evander. He would surrender it. With it, Connor might be able to fight her off.
For that, he needed a body. The fleshcrafting was progressing quickly, but he still had no arms. He could create new ones, but that would take more precious time and a lot more fleshcrafting energy that he might not have. So he cast his affinity senses across the plain and located them. They were lying a couple hundred yards on opposite sides of him.
The air above the plateau was wild from the clashing elements. Connor seized a couple vigorous young currents and used them to pluck up those broken limbs and whisk them across to him. Using little fingers of earth, he guided them carefully into place. It was a far simpler matter to reattach broken limbs than to grow new ones.
He only needed maybe half a minute.
Even that temporary distraction was too long. While he was looking for his arms, he’d slacked his assault against the queen. She burst through Evander-giant’s defensive ploys and swept her arms out with an enormous blast of her earth powers. The earthen shockwave ruptured the monster’s torso. It exploded, earth easily spraying far enough to shower Connor with chunks of the elfonnel’s body.
Through gaps in the shredded torso, Connor glimpsed the queen actually pause to straighten her hair. He also spotted the sculpted stone wedged up beneath what should be the monster’s collarbone.
Evander-giant started to reform, new earth flowing up to fill the gaps, but Queen Dreokt lunged upward, scrambled up the last few ribs, and closed her hands around the sculpted stone.
45
There’s a First Time for Everything
Student Eighteen closed on the heavy fighting around General Rosslyn and her remaining senior Spitters. The Mhortair were pressing their advantage, but the Spitters were fighting valiantly. She respected that, but would not hesitate to destroy them all.
“Now,” she said as she tapped pumice to protect herself as she plunged into the elemental fray.
Nuzha and Ennlin pulled a ropy length of mud up from the ground and flung it at Rosslyn, who was holding the center of her lines. She was far stronger than any of the others, and if they could take her out, the rest would fall o
r flee.
The mud caught Rosslyn by surprise. She raised a hand to ward it, and Nuzha grunted from the effort of pressing against the much stronger Petralist’s soapstone control. Using mud, they barely managed to overwhelm Rosslyn’s defenses, and they clobbered her in the face, knocking her right off her feet.
A dozen other Spitters ringed her. The men and women looked battered, but determined, their uniforms disheveled or bloody, but they faced Mhortair elements and blades with brave determination. As soon as Rosslyn fell back, two of them closed the gap, throwing concentrated water back at Student Eighteen to give their leader time to get up.
She stepped through it with pumice. The Spitters wouldn’t be fooled a second time, but she didn’t plan to give them the chance to recover.
Except General Aonghus’ voice boomed behind her, magnified by a Pathfinder. “Release the swarm!”
Student Eighteen spun away from her opponents to see what chaos Aonghus was planning. He had retreated to the roof of one of the large houses at the outskirts of town, hands thrown wide theatrically. At first, she thought he was looking right at her, but realized he was gazing past her, toward the river.
The surface of the river boiled, and scores of monstrous earthbound and waterbound summoned creatures burst forth and churned toward the shore, right where her teams were fighting Rosslyn and her Spitters.
That would have been a real problem if Connor hadn’t given Aifric control over the hundred summoned creatures that they’d created together with Kilian and Evander. Student Eighteen asked, “Isabell?”
“On it,” she responded immediately, sounding happy to finally have something useful to do. Since the queen broke marble, she’d lost her affinity with fire and spent a lot of time sulking until Connor suggested they manage the summoned creatures. Isabell had eagerly offered to head up the effort, reinforced by several of their other mind-sisters.