by Frank Morin
“I’ll kill you next, Mhortair!” Aonghus hissed.
“I doubt it,” she said with a sniff, and Hamish realized Student Eighteen was in charge at the moment. She nodded to the west and added, “Finish this business, Hamish. We’re low on time.”
He glanced west and noticed dark storm clouds building along the horizon. That was fast. They hadn’t been there moments ago. She glanced at him critically and pursed her lips in a disapproving frown. “I worry about you sometimes, Hamish. I understand your need to avenge Jean, but really? Stripping out of your battle suit in the middle of a fight is not honorable. It’s stupid.”
“Blame Aonghus, not me.”
She scowled at Aonghus, who was watching her angrily, but warily. “Whatever the queen did to your head was no little thing,” she said in a disgusted tone.
“She made me great!” he shouted.
“Great enough to waste time humiliating people before you fight them? Doesn’t sound great to me,” she said, then handed her own blade to Hamish. It was a finely balanced weapon. She saluted him and said, “Finish this. I’ve got to deal with Verena and Nicklaus. We need you in the sky so stop wasting time.”
“It’ll only take a moment,” he promised.
She trotted off, and Hamish dropped the dagger Aonghus had loaned him, then turned back to face his enemy. One of them was about to die, and he would not relent until he made sure it was Aonghus.
“You should have let that freak help, boy,” Aonghus said as the two of them began circling, swords ready.
“That’s one of those things cowards don’t understand. I don’t need help for this.”
Aonghus snarled and lunged. Hamish was already tapping obsidian again and he met the new blow with Aifric’s sword. It was a great weapon, so much better than the little knife. The two of them launched into a fast duel, blades flashing like quicksilver as they spun and turned, struck and parried, moving faster and faster.
Hamish found himself grinning as the tempo again accelerated and they both poured in every bit of skill they could muster. The duel would not end again until one of them struck a killing blow. For his part, Aonghus’ expression turned into a snarl of frustrated fury as Hamish met every stroke and returned just as fast. He might be an excellent swordsman, but he hadn’t actually needed to use that skill much in a long time. He usually relied upon his tertiary power to save him.
Not today. Hamish pushed harder and harder, driving his enemy back, looking for that one opening to end it.
A moment later he found it.
As he pressed Aonghus to the edge of one of the shallow craters from the recent bombardment. The soft edge collapsed, twisting Aonghus off balance, and he caught one sword stroke badly. In that compromised position, he couldn’t dodge Hamish’s follow-up strike quickly enough. In a fast reversal, Hamish scored a cut along Aonghus’ forearm. Not a deadly blow, but a sign that the end was coming.
Aonghus shot away, gaining some distance to set himself again. As Hamish closed, he taunted, “How do you hide from your precious Jean how much her hideous scars torture you?”
In reply, Hamish lunged, twisted his blade around Aonghus’ counter, and scored a hit across Aonghus’ armored stomach. His sword shrieked against armor, an eager sort of sound.
Aonghus leaped back, breaking away for a second, and Hamish read in his eyes that he recognized the truth. He would lose today.
So Hamish was surprised when Aonghus grinned, a sly look on his face. Not good. Hamish rushed in before Aonghus could try another underhanded trick, but the light around them suddenly twisted in a mind-bending distortion. Aonghus appeared to shimmer in front of Hamish and slide to the left.
Hamish lunged after him, driving his sword through his enemy before he could disappear. Hamish had seen Connor bend light to conceal himself, and they had developed invisibility cloaking for their flying vehicles too, so he understood what Aonghus was doing.
His sword drove home, but he felt nothing.
Tallan kick him in the backside. He was such a fool. Too late, Hamish realized Aonghus wasn’t trying for invisibility, but had created a mirage. He spun, blade up, and managed to catch a sword swinging for his head. At the brutal contact, the sword became visible.
So did Aonghus’ boot that drove into the pit of his stomach.
Hamish doubled over, dropping to the ground, as pain seared his midsection. His eyes watered and he felt weak and lightheaded for a second.
A second was far too long.
Aonghus laughed as he rushed in for the kill, but a tiny drone mechanical shot past Hamish’s head and struck Aonghus in the chest, knocking him tumbling back with an angry cry, and deflecting the blade just wide of Hamish’s shoulder. With a rush of blasting quartzite thrusters, an armored form shot past, pivoting in midair and catching Aonghus under the chin with an armored boot. The blow tumbled him back again, knocking him to the ground, momentarily senseless.
Hamish blinked in astonishment, wondering if he was already dead, or if Aonghus’ mirage had gotten totally out of control.
No. As the armored figure hovered and spun back toward him, thrusters purring just enough to keep them aloft, Hamish recognized one of his spare battle suits. And when the person inside of it raised their visor, he laughed.
Jean.
She hovered closer and dropped to the ground beside him, humming a constantly changing tune until she landed. She had never looked so beautiful.
She hauled him to his feet, and he breathed deep the clean scent of her. He cupped her perfect face with one hand, and her smile ignited all of his hope. He laughed. “You made it work!”
She grinned. “Just in time. I’ve been working with Ilse and Aifric to calibrate the flight controls to obey voice commands like my arm did. I still have to use the keystone for weapons systems, but I didn’t have time to launch anything.”
Ilse would be proud to see her flying.
“I’m glad you got here when you did. He cheats.”
Her smile faded and she glanced pointedly up and down his mostly nude figure. “When you told me to look away, I had no idea you were planning this.”
He flushed, even though he knew she was teasing. It helped him ground himself for what he had to do.
Jean gestured into the sky. “I have someone bringing you another spare, but that airbound elfonnel is a nightmare.”
“I don’t need it for this.” Hamish pulled some spare stones and a couple other items out of the extra pockets on her suit. Then he stepped around her and faced Aonghus, who was staggering back to his feet, his face bloody, his eyes wild.
When he spotted Jean standing beside Hamish, face completely healed, he gaped. “How?”
“You can’t keep someone as amazing as Jean down with just a little fire,” Hamish said.
“Then I’ll try steel,” Aonghus growled, lunging toward them again.
Hamish threw a diorite dart. The move caught Aonghus by surprise and he failed to dodge in time. The dart struck him in the shoulder with a satisfying explosion of blood that ripped his arm right off. His sword clanged onto the ground.
Aonghus staggered, staring down at his severed arm in disbelieving shock. It was weird how quickly the blood slowed from the stump, but Hamish wasn’t about to give him time to bleed out or try to heal.
For the first time, real fear showed in Aonghus’ eyes. He made a sweeping gesture with his other hand. Again the light began to bend, but Hamish was ready this time. He leaped through the mirage, slashing with his sword. Aonghus was already running, tapping basalt to escape.
Hamish shouted with rage. The coward! He’d never run him down, but started sprinting after Aonghus anyway. Shock and blood loss would hamper him soon, hopefully.
A missile streaked past him, caught the fleeing Aonghus, and exploded at his feet. He was so panicked, he hadn’t been looking back, didn’t even try to dodge. The explosion sent him tumbling to the ground with a cry of terror.
“Good shot!” Hamish shouted to Jean, then
crossed the distance in a rush. Aonghus managed to stagger back to his feet, but his grave injuries slowed him down for several precious seconds.
Hamish reached him before he could run again. His blade slashed across Aonghus’ right knee, and it buckled. Aonghus screamed, clutching at the wound with his one hand, but Hamish seized Aonghus’ hair and kept him from falling.
Their eyes met, and Hamish said, “Now you’ve felt a small fraction of the pain you inflicted on Jean.” He shook his hated enemy hard and shouted, “Do you want me to burn your face so you can feel the rest?”
He expected Aonghus to break, to cower with fear, but the general laughed, a wild, manic laughter as he clutched at Hamish’s steadying arm. “Try it! I know how to handle the burn, boy! You’ll think of me every time you look at your crippled woman.”
“She’s fully healed, and no one will remember your name.”
He drove his sword through the rent in Aonghus’ armor, below where his right shoulder had been. The blade plunged deep, and Aonghus gasped, eyes wide with pain as his entire body shuddered. Aonghus clutched at Hamish’s arm, mouth moving silently, but Hamish didn’t want to hear what the man had to say. He pushed Aonghus away, leaving the sword protruding from his side, feeling disgusted.
Then he realized that was foolish. He didn’t dare leave any doubt that Aonghus was really defeated. So he yanked the sword out in a spray of crimson blood. Aonghus gasped, his body shaking, but unable to scream.
Hamish raised his sword one final time, and as he looked down on the bloody, defeated wreck of a man, he thought of Ilse and all the people who had died because of Aonghus. The queen had twisted him into a rabid monster, and there was only one thing to do with rabid things.
Hamish struck.
He turned away from the headless corpse and rushed to Jean, who was staring at the dead man, her face expressionless like when she studied badly injured patients. Then she deliberately turned her back on him and took a long, deep breath. When she met his gaze, her eyes were calm.
“Are you all right?” he asked, taking her hands in his. He really should have told her to look away again before he killed Aonghus.
She took another breath, then nodded. She touched his face with a gentle hand and said, “Now, let him go so he doesn’t end up haunting us like he threatened to.”
“He no longer holds any threat,” Hamish said, and he was astonished to realize he meant it.
He’d hated Aonghus with such a fierce, hot rage that he’d barely remembered life without that thirst for vengeance, but now it was gone, dead with the hated man. He glanced back at Aonghus’ remains, a pitiful, bloody corpse, and felt nothing but sorrow. One more victim to the queen’s mind corruptions.
Jean was searching his gaze intently. She said softly, “Let’s leave everything about him here and focus on building new memories.”
Hamish loved that idea. He leaned in for a kiss.
Except that’s when Nicklaus shot past, his missing boot thrusters replaced with one of Hamish’s spare sets. They were far too large, but that just made him faster.
He laughed and waved and shouted, “Come on, Hamish! Let’s go fight the big earth monster!”
62
All Seven Kinds of Idiots Can Still Have Good Ideas
Connor embraced every affinity and cast his senses up into the storm. Fueled by the queen elfonnel, it had grown to a vast tempest, churning over itself around the elfonnel. Enormous amounts of power boiled through it, and he drew from every aspect of it that he could grasp.
Even though the queen lightning elfonnel was absorbing more and more strum, it didn’t control it all, and Connor siphoned huge quantities of both strum and magnis. He drained friction energy and heat, triggering a blizzard of ice that filled the air with bitter cold. Within moments, he accumulated so much energy that his entire enormous rampager form quivered and swelled.
His action drew the attention of the queen elfonnel, and it unleashed a barrage of lightning at him. Every second, Connor was understanding the relationship between strum and magnis better, and he not only deflected the lightning away, but seized much of its energy. He roared a challenge, his voice loud enough to shake the clouds, and Porphyry joined him, howling with bloodlust in his mind.
“Hold, Connor,” Evander suddenly interrupted the flood of euphoria Connor was riding. “By my calculations, this may not be—”
“It’s now or never,” Connor shouted, swept away by Porphyry’s eagerness for battle. He would take the fight to the elementals and rip them apart! He galloped upward through the air, muzzle aimed at the queen lightning elfonnel. He compressed all that energy into the highest-level frequency possible, just as he had when he disintegrated Queen Dreokt’s human body and when he had melted the mantle of the planet and triggered that blast of fission.
Connor released it all.
An invisible beam of energy shot from his open muzzle, crossing to the queen elfonnel in a blink. It glowed brighter than the sun to his enhanced eyes, even though it had passed far beyond the minuscule band of light visible to humans. The energy struck the elfonnel and blasted right through it.
Connor exulted as the elfonnel swelled, as if on the verge of exploding.
Except the elfonnel didn’t explode. It glowed brighter than ever, its ropy lightning body crackling like rolling thunder, and its queen-like lips split into a grin. Laughter like an avalanche boomed through the air.
“Thank you!”
“I’m all seven kinds of idiot,” Connor realized with a crushing sense of despair.
The queen lightning elfonnel was made of pure energy. He couldn’t kill it with energy. All he’d done was make it stronger!
“Um, you were saying?” he said to Evander, wishing he’d taken a moment to listen.
Queen Dreokt’s mindvoice screamed, so loud he couldn’t block it out, and he shivered at the unbearable pain he sensed within the scream.
Abruptly it shifted to laughter, and she shouted, “Yes! The glory is mine!”
“I believe we are grouted, as you like to say,” Evander responded.
Connor wished he’d spoken in Sentry speak. Then maybe he could pretend he didn’t understand.
It felt like Queen Dreokt had lost the battle for her own mind. By giving the elementals so much more power, he’d just sealed his own fate.
“No,” he growled, refusing to accept it. If he couldn’t defeat the monster’s physical form, maybe he could kill the queen’s mind before they could burst free. He should have thought of that sooner.
Connor max-tapped chert and flung himself at the queen’s broken mind. He hadn’t wanted to draw closer to her insanity, but maybe a little insanity was all the hope he had left.
The link felt unstable. She was fading fast, but Connor threw his thoughts down that shaky link, planning to rip her apart from the inside. She couldn’t fight him and the elementals at the same time.
The link flickered again, and instead of plunging into the middle of her insanity, Connor’s vision blackened, then reformed. He was surprised to recognize the lab of her affinityscape. The polished steel cabinets were grimy and cankered with rust, every glass case shattered. The room was trembling as if during an earthquake, and it smelled vile, like someone was roasting a pot of Hamish’s skunk extract.
Connor didn’t see the queen, but when he turned to look across her islands and bridges, he spotted Water and Fire running toward the near side of the top layer of the queen’s tertiary bridge. All of her tertiary islands had shifted side by side, anchoring a single, wide bridge to all of the elements. Water and Fire had almost reached the end, their expressions exultant. He sensed that once they set foot on her islands, there would be no stopping them.
So he dove for the queen’s tertiary islands, using the flexible nature of the mental scape to simply fly across the distance. Bridges, islands, and the dark, boiling mists of the queen’s abyss flashed beneath him as he crossed the distance in a blink.
Water spotted him and shouted
, “No!”
She and Fire both lunged for the end of the bridge, casting out tendrils of their elements ahead of them. A thin rope of water slapped down onto the very edge of the island next to a single, crimson spark of flame. The entire bridge shuddered, and Queen Dreokt’s voice screamed in terrible agony from every side.
Connor refused to accept defeat, but max-tapped granite and landed on the edge of the combined tertiary island like a thunderclap. Leading with his curse-laden fist, he slammed it against the reinforced supports anchoring the elemental bridges to the island.
The anchors exploded, the end of the island vaporized under the brutal impact, and the bridge broke free. It fell away, carrying Fire and Water with it.
“Curse you, mortal!” Fire raged as he disappeared into the obscuring mists. His rage transformed the mists into white-hot flames, but he did not rise out of them.
Water met Connor’s gaze as she fell out of sight, her expression so hurt, he wanted to slap himself. How could he still feel like he was somehow betraying her? They were the ones who wanted to use him, destroy the queen, snuff out Nicklaus’ life, and lay waste to the planet.
Panting from the effort, Connor grinned and wiped his brow. He was standing in a mindscape, merely a mental projection, but he felt exhausted from the almost-end-of-the-world moment. He started to laugh, feeling so relieved he sagged to one knee.
Except that’s when he noticed the thin rope of intertwined water and fire attached to the broken remains of the island’s outer edge.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Connor growled, punching the end of the island again. More stone crumbled away, but the elemental connection didn’t slip off. Somehow it remained attached.
“You cannot drive us out now, boy,” Fire chuckled from somewhere down in the fiery mists. “We own her mind and we will break free, no matter what you do in this space. We will reach that island.”
“Won’t do you much good if you can’t get anywhere else,” he promised, rising and jumping across to the queen’s limestone island. There he smashed the bridges apart, sending them tumbling into the mists.