by Frank Morin
The waters of the river burst the banks and shot across to them, wrapping them in a protective barrier just as the tornado touched down.
Howling winds sounded like rocks tumbling down a flooding ravine as they tore into the shield and ripped streams of water free, sucking it into the vortex. Ivor dug deep, embracing water as deep as he could, pulling more and more from the river to reinforce their shield. Kilian’s will melded with his own, ten times stronger, forming the bulwark upon which they built their shield. Enneleyn and the other Spitters wove their wills in to either flank, and all poured in more water, holding the shield with all their strength.
For a moment they held, the shield dome extending above them shaking and rattling under the barrage of wind. They had extended the shield over Rosslyn and her Spitters too, and after a second of stunned surprise, Rosslyn shouted, “Join the shield!”
Her forces tried to help, but although they fought better as teams than most other Spitters Ivor had ever faced, they lacked the intensive training of his team. That’s why he and his twenty had survived so long. Still, their assistance helped ease the load, and he started to relax. Airbound elfonnel weren’t so tough.
A second tornado speared at them from the west, moving like no natural tornado could. That side of their shield was weakest, and the tornado ripped it right off, sucking the water away with a horrible slurping sound. Two Spitters were also yanked off their feet and sucked away, screaming, disappearing into the black wind funnel.
Rosslyn shouted a defiant war cry and rushed to the breach, plugging it with a fresh wave of water in a magnificent display of ascended Petralist power. Ivor never could have moved so much water so fast, through the linked interference of so many other Spitters.
It was almost enough.
The second tornado pressed in harder and intensified, battering the water shield, while Rosslyn stood alone against it, her forces stumbling back from the onslaught. Then the tornado burst through, air hardening like black fingers that seized her and yanked her away.
A delicate, silvery tentacle of water shot from their shield, striking like a cobra, and wrapped around Rosslyn’s left ankle. Ivor felt Kilian’s will controlling the water, and stared in wonder. Kilian stood beside him, outwardly calm, but his eyes were filled with deep, blue ice, and his will was like a raging inferno in Ivor’s water senses.
“I will not let you have her,” Kilian said simply, tethering Rosslyn, who was screaming, her hair flailing, her clothing whipping around her as winds tore at her and tried to drag her into the sky to her death.
Even if Kilian managed to drag her back down, she’d get ripped apart if she hung in that vortex much longer. Ivor risked easing his hold on the shield, trusting to his teams to fill in the gap. He reached farther out into the river and yanked as much water as he could grab. A horizontal waterfall shot across the short distance to them, and he poured it all right up that funnel, temporarily choking it with the heavy load.
Kilian yanked hard, and the tornado’s grip on Rosslyn snapped. He had pulled a little too hard, and Rosslyn tumbled away, splashing down into the river, the safest place for any Spitter.
“Good work, General,” Kilian said to him.
“Thank you. I’m impressed you took the risk to save her,” he admitted.
“She’s a brave woman and a good general who cares about her people. I’ll give her a chance to make a better choice before I let her die.”
The tornado battering their water shield abruptly faded away. Through the shimmering water, the airbound elfonnel had turned toward one Battalion that had powered through the winds, rising directly above the monster, thrusters roaring so loud they had to be max-tapping every single one. Those engines could produce a lot of push force, but they had to be using copious amounts of pumice and blind coal to make such headway.
Every gun turret was oriented on the monster, blasting it with every type of round, raking it with explosions, but to little effect. It was an impressive sight, but Ivor feared it would prove little more than a defiant gesture. They should have spent all that energy and precious blind coal fleeing or trying to land.
Another tornado vortex rose above the monster, reaching for the Battalion, and Ivor didn’t doubt it would tear the great craft right out of the sky. He turned his mini hub to the general officer’s channel and shouted above the tumult of voices, “Look out! Airbound closing in!”
Captain Leppin replied calmly, “Last Word bomb away.”
The bombardment stopped, and a single small speck shot toward the monster, driven so fast it must be driven by a powerful thruster. It cut through the winds so well, it must also have a piece of activated blind coal aboard. The bomb plunged into the funnel cloud, and two seconds later it detonated deep within the elfonnel.
The explosion of fire and destruction inside the heart of the monster was spectacular. Its winds glowed crimson and orange before the pressure wave ripped out through dozens of gaps, pouring flames and smoke in every direction. The elfonnel shook from top to bottom, and the winds howling across the valley stilled for a moment.
Many voices rose in a great cheer, and Ivor dared hope that mighty bomb had done the trick.
The flames dissipated, and the monster reformed, looking unchanged from what it had before. The cheering faded, and Ivor’s hope wilted. He looked to Kilian, who shrugged and said, “Wouldn’t make a story you’ll love to tell your grandkids if it was that easy.”
Kilian then turned to the rest of the Spitters and said, “I know you didn’t sign up for elfonnel hunting training, but here we are. So what’ll it be, kids? Will you help us save half a million lives, or do you really want to fight me?”
“And if we survive?” one tall Spitter from Rosslyn’s team asked nervously.
Kilian grinned. “If we survive, I think we’ll all be finished with fighting for a while, don’t you?”
The man nodded immediately. “Yes, of course. No more fighting. Sounds good to me.”
It sounded good to Ivor and everyone else too. Ivor was glad most of them seemed to have flexible minds, because the battle had twisted way beyond even his wildest fears. He asked Kilian, “So what do we do?”
Kilian pointed toward the earthbound monster that was bearing down on them. Other soldiers were wisely scattering out of its path, but it didn’t turn aside. It had a target, and they were it. “We kill that thing. Water is effective against earth. And pray Connor wins.”
Shona rushed up to them on fracked legs. She looked dirty and battered, but Ivor grinned to see her intact. Half a dozen Striders skidded to a halt behind her, looking panicked but still disciplined. “Kilian, did you see that airbound? It took a Last Word to the face!”
“We’ll deal with them,” Kilian assured her, “but too many people are in the way. Get in touch with Wolfram. Between the two of you, I need every non-Petralist to retreat. North or south, I don’t care. Just get them away from the fight.”
She nodded and shot away. Ivor silently wished her luck, then turned toward the towering earthbound smashing through the ruins of Lossit on its beeline path toward them. “We’ll follow your lead, Kilian.”
He grinned, looking more excited by the challenge than terrified by it, and raised his voice. “Listen up, kids! We do this together. There are enough of us to bring it down. Either turn it into mud or drown it in the river. We’ll deal with the airbound after.”
“How exactly are we going to do that?” Ivor asked as the teams formed up, some still looking uneasy by the abrupt alliance with enemies who had been trying to kill them only moments ago.
Kilian shrugged, his eyes twinkling with bits of glittering ice. “I have no idea. It’s the first airbound I’ve ever heard of.”
60
The Finer Points of Getting Electrocuted
They were threatening Verena.
Bad idea.
Connor’s fear evaporated under a fresh tidal wave of anger. By targeting Verena and other helpless friends, the elementals proved that alth
ough they might not be human, they knew far too well how to act like the vilest of cowards.
Too many people had already died. He would not allow the queen lightning elfonnel to keep killing. At the outer edges of his affinity senses, he felt Air rising as an elfonnel, and although he lacked access to slate to quest for Earth, he had no doubt Earth was rising too. They were moments away from complete freedom.
They weren’t free yet.
The queen lightning elfonnel swelled, growing incandescent again in preparation for launching another lightning barrage to kill Verena and how many others? Connor couldn’t match it for raw strum power, but maybe he didn’t have to.
He concentrated on the distant valley. It was so far, it strained his abilities, but he refused to accept that all he could do was witness Verena and his other friends die. Luckily the air was already wild with tumultuous energy from the previous lightning strikes and from the recently-risen elfonnel, so he had plenty of material to work with. Connor focused all his effort on forming a shield of magnis and extending it across the valley. It was a huge construct, and he never could have accomplished it so fast trying to move heavy earth or water, but he was working with small charges, and they were already motivated by so much chaos. They responded to his will in the blink of an eye.
More lightning shot from the monster, gathered into another giant bolt, and shot away to wreak destruction. It crossed the distance in a blink, but ricocheted off his magnis shield. Connor yanked against the lightning, trying to diffuse the strum contained within it, and it split apart into scores of smaller lightning bolts that boiled across the curving edge of his magnis shield before streaking away in every direction.
“Finally you manage to do something right,” Queen Dreokt’s mindvoice reached him faintly.
It was annoying that the more he succeeded in distracting the lightning elfonnel, the more he helped her fight against Water and Fire and potentially escape.
The queen lightning elfonnel glared down at him. Above it, the clouds roiled and seemed on the verge of plunging down from the sky to cover the land in endless night. Connor needed to keep it focused on him, not on his vulnerable friends, so he switched to strum and raked his senses across the air surrounding the monster.
That air was filled with concentrated charges, and he managed to seize a lot of them. He wasn’t interested in fighting the monster for control of that energy, so he cast it all up into the clouds, driving it into a single, concentrated point of negative energy.
As he hoped, the difference in charges was too great for even that elfonnel to ignore. Lightning as thick around as a palace ripped free of the monster and tore up through the sky from it, striking the clouds and scattering among them. Thunder boomed so loud it violently shook him, even though he’d blocked all sounds from his ears.
The queen elfonnel shrank by a third as energy drained out of it. The vast strum charge dispersed through the clouds, but did not disappear. There was simply too much energy up there, flowing to common points and coalescing. Soon it would concentrate into another point where lightning would naturally strike.
He expected the queen lightning elfonnel to swoop down and try gobbling him up again, but instead it laughed, a terrible booming roar, and shot away to the east, heading for Lossit valley.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Connor shouted, throwing himself after it as fast as the air currents could drag him. He wasn’t fast enough, and the queen elfonnel pulled ahead. He felt Dreokt’s thoughts touch his again for a second, but heard no coherent words, only shrieking, as if she was in terrible agony.
“Hold on,” he urged her. He needed to try something different.
So he again turned to his primaries, starting with porphyry. He’d saved the last precious palm-full of porphyry for that fight, and he needed it now. The sharp-edged powder chewed into his skin and flowed up his arm, and Porphyry awoke in his heart. He suddenly felt strong and embraced the rush of eagerness for battle that swept through him from the deadly stone.
The comforting itch of granite rolled through him next, multiplying his strength, while the coursing energy of basalt was like a refreshing breeze through his limbs. Verena’s voice sounded in his mind, reassuring him that he would succeed as he tapped obsidian. It also accelerated his thoughts, and he got a crazy new idea.
Connor added the bubbly feel of pumice to the mix, then max-tapped limestone and called upon stilling. He linked every single primary affinity stone to stilling, and supercharged. Them. All.
Connor’s body shook under the onslaught of supercharged strength, speed, and thought. Super pumice seemed to accelerate the process, building the others tenfold faster. Supercharged porphyry rocked Connor, as if he’d swallowed his own mini-lightning elfonnel, and he gasped from the rush. Porphyry howled approval, the sound echoing through his mind and driving him on.
Connor threw aside all restraint.
And transformed into a rampager.
This time the transformation did not fill him with horrific pain like it had in the past. He wasn’t sure if that was because of his ascension or because fleshcrafting allowed him to deny himself pain. He shouted with that sense of exultant horror that always swept through him as he lost himself and took on a new form. This time he did not lose his sense of control.
As a rampager, Connor was the greatest hunter.
But even as a rampager, he could not destroy the elfonnel.
Connor needed to become something more.
As his limbs transformed and grew, bulging impossibly huge with deadly strength, his hands shifting into claws and his jaws elongating into the massive maw of a rampager, Connor tapped fleshcrafting.
He could already feel its power beginning to wane, but enough remained for one last effort, an attempt to create something that could fight the queen lightning elfonnel. Connor drew every bit of fleshcrafting available to him and poured it into his still-transforming shape, combining it with supercharged porphyry.
His transformation accelerated a hundredfold. His limbs seemed to erupt outward, and his chest ballooned, as if he’d swallowed an entire oxen. He screamed, the sound a roaring like all of the Lossit falls combined, and his vision turned red. His body burned with agony, but also with a sense of growing exultation, and for a moment the transformation overwhelmed his ability to comprehend what he’d done to himself.
Three seconds later he rose to stand on solid air a hundred feet above the plateau as the world’s first super rampager.
And it was awesome!
A normal rampager was terrifying at eight to ten feet tall. Connor had grown ten times that size. With stilling looping his other affinities into super-enhanced status, super granite strength reinforced his rampager might until his form contained so much raw power that he somehow knew he could crush Mount Ingram to dust if it still existed. He could draw upon super speed, and through obsidian, super reflexes and thinking. For the finishing touch he ignited his teeth like miniature suns with limestone, then wrapped them in dense magnis fields to make them impervious to the lightning.
In his mind Porphyry howled. “Now we hunt!”
“You better believe it,” Connor growled. His fear was gone, replaced by bloodlust so vast, he eagerly fastened his eyes on the one being that dared challenge his dominance.
The queen elfonnel had slowed and rotated in the air to consider his transformation. It actually hesitated at the sight of his transformed being, and the queen’s mindvoice cheered. “Excellent! Destroy yourself in the most epic manner you can, and I might be able to escape. I warned you, child. Porphyry would be the death of you.”
She had no idea. Connor grinned. “Here we go.”
He raced through the air that to him felt as solid as a mountainside, closing on his hated enemy. The rampager was the mightiest hunter in the world. With its help, Connor had defeated elfonnel, had beaten his uncle to lead the pack, and had learned to master his own elemental powers that had refused to cooperate after his second ascension.
Now h
e was a super rampager, and he would destroy the super elfonnel.
The queen elfonnel recovered quickly from its surprise and swept back to meet him, lightning bolts ripping the air between them. Connor restored his magnis shield, far stronger than it had been in his puny human form, and the lightning bolts deflected away. Roaring with battle lust, he plunged into the heart of the lightning elfonnel, tearing at it with claws that could rip palaces apart. Wrapped in magnis, those claws severed ropy strands of pure strum that formed the elfonnel’s body like permanent bolts of lightning.
The severed lightning shot away, blasting gaping, black holes in the ground or plunging up into the roiling clouds. The lightning elfonnel swelled with more strum as it sucked in every charge it could get. It clubbed at him with a hundred burning hands, trying to rend his giant body to bits.
His magnis shield deflected the hands, and he bit and tore, raking with claws in a frenzy of bloodlust. He ripped bits of the elfonnel away, triggering a lightning storm of bolts that shot in every direction, blackening earth, shattering distant trees, tearing into clouds, and rending the air with thunderclaps.
The elfonnel flowed around him, wrapping him in tentacle-like arms of incandescent light that hurled him downward with enough force to shatter mountain. He tried catching himself, slowed dramatically, but still struck the barren ground like a meteor. His huge body blasted a new canyon into the earth, spraying dirt a thousand feet into the air.
Connor-rampager hurled himself back into the air to meet his foe, who was plunging down toward him, leading with a spear of pure lightning fifty feet across. Connor swatted it aside, and the lightning spear blasted a trench in the ground a hundred feet deep and a quarter mile across.
Connor could still feel his remaining tertiary affinities, so he grabbed every bit of water he could reach and pulled it all in. He sucked the water right out of the distant lakes and waterfalls of Lossit away. Tons of water cascaded in and he hurled it all at the queen lightning elfonnel. Earth might be the best insulator, but since he couldn’t access earth, water would have to do.