by Frank Morin
Then the Juggernaut slammed into her and rolled over. Hamish activated directional thrusters, rolling it around for another pass.
Harley was struggling to rise, fresh blood on her angry face, but she still hadn’t screamed. How did she do that? How could she still be living? Connor could manage impressive healings, but nothing like that.
Hamish started to fear the Juggernaut was not nearly powerful enough to kill her.
Snow suddenly condensed into long ropes that snaked across the ground to wrap her legs and yank her feet out from under her. She scowled, and more grasping fingers of earth ripped the watery bonds free. With the Water Moccasin dead, who was controlling the snow?
Ivor.
Hamish ignited thrusters, accelerating toward Harley to hit her while she was distracted. Before he could reach her, the Crusher Flameweaver who had shot into the air a moment ago slammed down onto her like a meteor storm, piercing her in a dozen places with white-hot flames and driving his sword into her heart.
This time she did scream as her skin blackened and blood fountained out of so many wounds. The Flameweaver shouted in victory and raised his sword high. It looked like he planned to take off her head.
Harley sank into the ground.
The Flameweaver cursed and erupted into the air, but a grasping hand of earth caught him and yanked him back down. Cursing and shouting defiance, flames blackened the ground all around him as he clawed at the the bonds dragging him down into suddenly-liquid earth and out of sight.
Hamish arrived a second later, but no trace of the man remained. That was simply not fair. How could Harley have survived those wounds? What was her limit?
“Take away her sandstone, I guess,” he muttered.
Hamish prowled the area, but saw no sign of her. Maybe they’d injured her badly enough that she’d retreated.
He was just about to go check on Ilse when Harley rose out of the ground closer to the river, right at the point where the speedcaravan track began its steep ascent up the elevated ramp toward Lord’s Gate.
Her clothing was charred and ripped, but she looked whole. And really angry. She glared at Hamish and spat, “I’ve always hated Builders.”
Then she ripped forty feet of ramp out of the ground.
“No fair,” Hamish cried, activating thrusters, but the Juggernaut didn’t accelerate quickly enough.
Harley slid across the ground, legs not even moving, and struck him with the bridge like a batter in the Sogail cammag ball game. The impact rang through the Juggernaut, sending it bouncing and tumbling away. The little brass casters made a surprisingly cheery sound as they spun along their tracks, keeping him upright while the armor tumbled.
Hamish couldn’t bring it under control for a couple hundred yards. He swung around in a long arc back toward Harley, who gestured him closer, hefting the bridge like it weighed nothing at all.
“Okay, hag lady, how by the Tallan’s twisted memory do I kill you?” he muttered.
As he accelerated toward her again, snow condensed in front of him, forming a ramp. Hamish grinned. Had to be Ivor.
The Juggernaut shot up the ramp and arced into the air. Hamish activated thrusters and accelerated the outer shell spin while flipping a lever to snap into place seven blades.
Harley wound up for another hit as Hamish hurtled down toward her in the spinning, bladed armor.
Game on.
87
Peace, Be Still
Connor rushed back toward the enormous Army Gate set into the thick outer wall. Screams and shouts echoed from behind the closed gate in a steadily rising tempo. The soldiers on the wall no longer stood at attention, but fought with insane ferocity.
Two of them fell screaming from the walls. They hit the ground hard, but didn’t seem to register their injuries. They leaped upon each other, snarling like animals. Connor rushed up to them with basalt speed. He tapped it to his arms and cracked their skulls together. Their eyes rolled up in their heads and they collapsed to the snowy ground.
He didn’t have time to knock out everyone individually. As much as he disliked stilling, it offered the one chance for Merkland.
Stepping right up to the heavy gates, Connor max-tapped basalt, letting the rushing freedom of the stone fill him with its boundless energy. His entire body quivered with the need to run.
He took a deep breath to focus on the daunting task. He’d struggled to maintain the stilling effect over half of the ground under the city the previous night, but he couldn’t afford to fail.
Connor needed every advantage. So he tapped pumice too. The stone again helped him connect with the green-frequency power, and that seemed to magnify his connection when he transitioned the basalt energy to that same green frequency.
Green-tinted power thundered through him, bolstering his hopes that he could make this work. Driven by the intensifying sounds of battle within the walls, Connor drew upon all that energy coiled inside of him like a mighty spring.
And unleashed it upon Merkland.
The city spread under his senses like a map in his mind. Every living thing seemed to glow in his sight as his basalt energy flowed past. Hating what he had to do, Connor pressed basalt to every single living soul.
It latched onto them so much easier than it had the more subtle energy of the ground beneath Merkland. Living things burned their life forces so fiercely, they seemed to draw the basalt power like lodestones.
Their rage was like a living thing. Most of them were locked in mortal combat, and even as he connected with them, he felt dozens die. The candle-fires of their lives snuffed out. He needed to move faster.
Sweat trickled into his eyes as he pushed that stilling energy farther across the city. The first few blocks went easily, but the farther he extended his influence, the slower it crept. He could feel the men, women, and even children savaging each other, but didn’t dare activate the stilling power to steal their energy until he connected with all of them. He wasn’t sure he could connect to more of them once he activated it.
Every second seemed to take forever as he extended his influence farther and farther. His will soon blanketed the entire military section, with thousands of soldiers locked in mortal combat, but as he pressed farther into the residential districts, he reached his outermost limits.
He could feel more people beyond the fringes of his control. He couldn’t reach farther, but needed to. He could sense them fighting, killing each other. The destruction sweeping Merkland tore at his heart and tears froze on his cheeks.
He couldn’t reach them all. Could he still the ones he could reach, hope that he could move on to the others before they all died?
No, there wasn’t time for a piecemeal approach.
Connor focused on his affinities. He was max-tapping basalt and pumice both, but he needed more power. He sensed that more was available, but he couldn’t seem to access it. Pumice seemed to help boost his connection to the green energy source, but it wasn’t enough.
Through his external basalt senses, one of the lives he was brushing against drew his attention. A child, barely more than a toddler, was biting her mother like an angry nuall. Her mother snatched the child into the air and spun toward a nearby window.
She was going to throw the child out, was going to murder her own baby.
For a moment Connor forgot all about the thousands of other death battles occurring across the city. He seized the woman and activated stilling. She managed three quick steps toward the window, with the furious child raised overhead, ready to cast her away and dash her onto the cobblestones below before.
One pace shy of the window, stilling robbed her of the energy to move. She slumped to the floor, and Connor caught her daughter with stilling too. For three long seconds, he held them, drawing their life force away, but could not spare more time for them alone.
How many more children would die while he was distracted? The thought tortured him. He had to find a way to get more energy. Pumice was insufficient. He needed a stronger gre
en-frequency stone.
The solution was clear, and he was out of time. Only one stone might offer a chance to save those helpless people.
Porphyry.
Even Kilian had agreed it would probably grant him an even tighter connection to the green-frequency power. He could no longer hesitate.
Connor extracted the bag of porphyry from his belt, grateful that he’d kept it close. Every scream that echoed from the city drove him to move faster. He purged pumice, then slipped a hand into the bag and willed porphyry into him.
The hard, little grains bit into his hand, and he groaned as the pain intensified. The feeling of teeth gnawing up his arm distracted him so badly, he almost lost connection with basalt.
He could not afford that. He’d spent far too much time already spreading his will across the city. Starting over would cost too many lives. So as the porphyry reached his heart and his limbs shot out in convulsive shudders, he screamed with the effort of holding in the rampager. He could not afford to transform, did not want to become a raging monster. All he needed was the connection to the green-frequency power.
For several seconds, his vision blurred, turning purple. His limbs trembled as porphyry poured through his bloodstream, driving every muscle to transform. The beast in his heart awakened and raged against his constraint.
I cannot release you now, he snarled. Do my bidding, and maybe we can run together one night, but not now.
For a moment, he teetered on the brink, his skin rippling, his bones feeling like they were liquefying in preparation for the transformation. His connection to basalt faltered, then snapped.
“No!” Connor shouted, desperation giving him the strength to fight down the porphyry. The beast paced in his heart, but he held it prisoner, refused to listen to its calls for release.
His skin stopped bubbling, and the pain subsided. Connor took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and cautiously tapped porphyry while still in human form.
The affinity was bound to his heart, and it felt like a cage rimmed with white-hot fire. Connor pressed his mind to it, but refused to open the door to release the rampager coiled within.
As soon as he touched it, his connection to the green-frequency power source snapped into place. Like the waterfall of Donleavy, power thundered through the center of his being with unimaginable force. Funneled through his porphyry affinity, he could tap that stream, draw upon it.
Connor laughed, exulting in the moment, but unable to take the time to really enjoy it. With that green-frequency connection so strong, Connor again tapped external basalt and cast his influence across Merkland.
This time, fueled by that flood of higher frequency power, he spread his will over the entire city in seconds. The fighting was still raging. Even though to him it felt like half an hour had passed, the bomb had probably exploded less than a minute ago. He could sense many dead, but fewer than he had feared.
As soon as Connor linked to every living soul, he activated stilling.
All across the city, the invisible influence latched onto every life and began to suck away their energy. More precious seconds crept by as it took effect, and half a hundred more people died needlessly violent deaths. There were just too many of them, and his attention was spread too thin, but Connor refused to falter.
Finally, stillness crept inside and denied them the ability to move. They stopped punching, kicking, stabbing, screaming, and trying to kill each other. The strongest of them lasted a few extra seconds, but they all settled into perfect stillness, not even breathing. Forty thousand souls languished, prisoner to his control.
They no longer killed each other.
Now he was killing them all.
Vast amounts of energy drifted into the air from them, like smoke from tens of thousands of individual campfires. It coalesced over Merkland, then began drifting toward Connor, drawn to him by the invisible cords of his influence.
He didn’t want to accept it, but his body quivered under the strain of holding such a vast stilling in place, even when fueled by so much green-frequency power. Hating himself for needing to do it, he drew that stolen energy closer and breathed it in.
The smoke touched him, and energy pounded into Connor, filling him with life and with strength, everything that he was stealing from them. Connor gasped at the incredible influx of energy, feeling more alive and more horrified than he ever had in his life. It felt so much more alive, more vibrant than the energy he’d taken from the earth beneath Merkland. The feeling was intoxicating, and for a second he loved it.
Then the first person died.
The young soldier had already been bleeding out when Connor caught him in the stilling web, but his magic snuffed the man’s life out several seconds before it would have escaped on its own. Connor had killed him.
Dozens of others were fading fast, reaching the limits of no return. Healthy bodies could survive several minutes without air, but he was forcing perfect stillness upon them, denying their blood the ability to pump, their hearts movement. The strongest would last a few minutes.
The weakest might not recover, even if he released them now.
He found the life force of the little girl he’d saved from her own mother. She was fading quickly, too young and weak to withstand his assault for much longer.
The porphyry madness would not last much longer either, but he could feel it thrumming through them still. If he released them, more of them would die than if he maintained the effect.
He forgot about Harley, about his friends, about the battle. His entire focus became the city of Merkland with those slowly dimming lives flickering in his mind.
Tears stung his eyes as he held on while the second person expired. Then the third. Each time, a final burst of energy rushed into him from them.
That little girl would be next. He could feel her life force drop to that critical point, on the cusp of snuffing out entirely.
Connor released her.
He hadn’t even realized it was possible to release an individual from the stilling web, but he couldn’t take it any more. He did not care if it was possible. It had to be done.
Before the little girl faded from his mind completely, he felt her take a breath, felt her begin to cry.
She would live.
He sagged with relief. Bolstered by that success, he swept his thoughts across the city, trying to touch each person, to gauge their strength. The city was mapped in his mind, each life force like a candle, but the weakest were flickering, nearly exhausted. He released them before their candles snuffed out.
Hearts racing, blood pounding, many of their first breaths came out as porphyry-induced rage-howls. But they were the weakest, the wounded who lacked the strength to kill. Others were the children caught in the porphyry disaster. It would take critical seconds for them to regain strength to try hurting others. Hopefully by then the rampager madness would pass.
Connor lost track of time as he slowly extracted life after life from his own influence. With each one, the energy and glorious life force pouring into him reduced by a fraction.
A part of him that he did not like to recognize even existed hated to see that power go, but Connor refused to acknowledge the whispered thoughts that maybe he should hold on a little longer. He could not live with himself if he did that.
All of a sudden, the porphyry madness evaporated, its course exhausted. Connor felt the change in the energy he was draining from the city. Relieved, he prepared to release the stilling.
But he hesitated. In that moment of letting go, he found it incredibly difficult to release that glorious lifeline that held him in the sunlight of all that energy. Releasing it was like consciously choosing to plunge into the cold depths of a black well.
With a wrenching effort, Connor broke the connection and released basalt. He collapsed to the ground, trembling, feeling cold and miserable now that the flood of new life was gone.
“Stop it,” he chided himself, leaping to his feet. What would Verena say if she knew he was mopi
ng about the fact that he’d just saved the entire city from destroying itself?
He might have severed that connection, but every inch of him thrummed with strength. Even more remarkably, he felt stable. Frowning, Connor scanned himself. Beneath the pure, raw power he’d stolen from all those lives, he still tapped porphyry, and the green-frequency power source still thundered through him with undiminished force.
It no longer felt disruptive like it had even while tapping pumice.
Connor touched the rampager heart of his porphyry affinity. He sensed that coiled beast there still, but for once it seemed content to wait. The rage of the rampager still burned within that porphyry affinity, but it no longer clouded his emotions. He realized with a thrill that somehow he could now use that rage as a weapon without losing himself to it.
A thought floated to his consciousness. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but he felt it as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.
Now we hunt as well in your weak form as we do in ours. Let us continue the hunt!
Connor grinned and turned south toward the crashing sounds of desperate struggle. He drew upon the inexhaustible strength pounding through him and focused it into a stone-hardened resolve.
Harley had brought the fight to them, chosen to unleash porphyry upon the city. She’d unwittingly forced him to learn the secret to stabilizing his affinities. Now she’d pay the price. He swore upon all the lives just lost that he would not stop until she died.
Connor leaped into a run.
88
When in Doubt, Charge!
Only minutes had passed since they started the slow, silent advance against the enemy army, guided by the Spitters, to close on the left rear flank of the much bigger army.
Rory’s force spread to either side of Jean in a rough line of small squads, fading to indistinct figures in the early morning heavy snowfall. She stayed close to Rory and his central command group, with Student Eighteen ghosting along by her side, one hand gripping the handle of one of five daggers on her belt.
Ivor’s voice suddenly boomed from Jean’s speakstone, sounding extremely loud in the quiet. Jean jumped in surprise and tried to cover it, but that didn’t muffle it at all.