Arakan growled. Even though Oryn wasn’t his child he didn’t want to lose her. She had been the most loyal and efficient officer under his command. Still, the shadow was making a good case. But could he be trusted?
Perhaps the voice of the shadow was just his conscience. But if it wasn’t . . . Then perhaps he was being manipulated by an outside force?
Arakan opened the hidden compartment of his armrest and, before the shadow could complain, he took a drop of his medicine.
“You can run away from me for a time,” said the shadowy figure before dissolving into thin air as if made of black ink, “but you can’t hide forever.”
Chris didn’t like the feeling of oppression emanating from the swamps around them. The putrid odor did nothing to help.
“Charming place,” he said as more bubbles from the black goo burst around them, releasing an even more putrescent stench.
“Isn’t it?” answered Argos. “Remember, this is just in your head.”
“It feels real enough to me.”
“Gaia warned us that it would. I wonder why we haven’t seen anyone yet.”
“What the hell is that?” Chris pointed towards the middle of the dark lake.
A large, spiky, furry leg emerged from a pool of black goo, and then another. It was a giant spider thirty-five feet in height, with too many yellow, shining eyes to count.
“I hate arachnids,” said Argos.
“Which is probably why Gaia is using them to train us.”
The spider skipped across the surface of the dark lake as if it was solid. It froze both Chris’ and Argos’ blood.
Chris prepared a fireball in each hand and threw them at the spider. It opened its large mouth, revealing row after row of razor-sharp teeth as it swallowed the fireballs. All its eyes shone brighter for a second.
“Doesn’t look like that’s the way to go about it,” said Chris.
“I guess not.”
Argos used his telekinesis to unearth two large trees, sharpened their trunks into sharp spikes, and threw them at the giant spider that had resumed its galloping march towards them.
The giant spider jumped high into the air and avoided the massive tree stakes that eventually fell into the dark goo and drowned.
“Where the hell is it?” shouted Chris, looking all around them, unable to acquire a visual on their massive foe.
They could hear its spiky legs running on something, but the lack of light around them, coupled with the echo each sound made in the area, confused their senses.
A horrible screech from behind startled them, and they turned around to come face to face with the hairy beast.
Argos felt a strong air current and saw one of the spider’s legs streaking towards Chris’ position. He kicked Chris out of the way just before the leg planted itself deep in the mud right in front of Argos. He jumped upward and grabbed the leg with one hand while concentrating all his crimson energy into his free forearm to create a slashing weapon.
He slashed at the leg of the spider and his hand went through the leg like butter. The beast jerked, tossed Argos to the muddy ground, and unleashed a shriek of pain. Phosphorescent yellow blood sprayed from the severed limb.
“I guess we go for its legs then,” said Argos out loud.
Chris was getting out of the mud.
“Thanks for the save, but ouch.” Chris rubbed his throbbing cheek.
“Didn’t exactly have time for anything subtle. Sorry about that.”
Chris extended his forearm and Argos grabbed it to get himself back up.
“So, we cut its legs one by one? That could take some time,” said Chris.
“Not if we work together.”
“Let me guess; I’m playing bait?”
Argos nodded.
“Alright, let’s have some fun.” Chris shot upward into the dark gray sky and disappeared beyond the trees.
A few seconds later, a flurry of fireballs shot downwards towards the beast. It raised itself upward, supporting itself on four legs, opened its mouth and gobbled Chris’ attacks as it had before.
Argos flew at the back of the spider undetected. He brought all his energy to bear and concentrated on creating a much bigger energy blade on his right forearm. When he deemed it large enough, he shot upward at an angle and spliced the spider in two, repressing a gag reflex from being spattered with so many spider bits and so much spider blood.
When he had finished slicing through, Argos somersaulted in the air and turned towards the split spider, only to see smaller spiders climbing out of each side of its belly.
“Great, more arrachnids!” he exclaimed.
Chris flew next to him. “I thought we had decided to go for its legs?”
“Patience isn’t my strong suit.”
“I can see that. Let’s finish this off, shall we?” said Chris with a smile.
They both opened fire with wave upon wave of small fireballs.
Soon there was nothing left but burnt flesh and bits on the surface of the muddy swamp.
“Well done,” said Argos, flashing Chris a thumbs up.
“Right back at ya, Uncle.”
Chase landed on the ground to check if Arakan had survived under the massive mound of mountain rubble. The ground shook heavily, and debris shifted in front of him.
A giant Arakan emerged from under the boulders. He kept growing as he rose and was soon a hundred times his original size.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” said Chase.
Chase shot into the sky to be at eye level with Arakan. What was he to do now? Whatever he did Gaia 2 would find a way to up the ante.
The massive Arakan swatted him like a fly at incredible speed. The impact was so strong Chase thought he would lose consciousness and was thrown miles away. He crashed into the cliffs, splitting them one after another as he crashed through.
The resulting pain was excruciating. Each of his bones and muscles hurt, and he could barely move. He lay on his back and was plunged into darkness. Above him the massive Arakan was on his way, ready to squash him like a bug.
Uh-oh, not good!
Chase tried to move but was rewarded with intense pain. Almost every bone in his body had been broken, and he didn’t have time to heal himself.
He had a fleeting thought about what would happen if he died in the illusion, remembering Gaia had told him not to. But fortunately, before Arakan’s feet could land upon him, Arakan was stopped by an army of battle droids. Hundreds of them, in fact, with arms and legs interlocked to create a net blocking Arakan’s foot. The net deformed on impact, and then sprung upwards, catapulting Arakan high into the sky.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Gaia.
Chase attempted to speak but the pain was still too strong.
“Heal yourself, you fool,” said Gaia, clearly annoyed.
Chase healed his wounds while every one of the battle bots fused together to create a larger battle droid that rivaled Arakan in size. Chase flew upwards and stopped near the droid’s massive head.
“That’s a neat trick.”
A large cloud of sand appeared on the horizon, where Arakan had crashed to the ground.
“Chase, what part of use your imagination didn’t you understand? If you fight him like you would in real life, Gaia 2 is going to eat you for breakfast.”
“How am I supposed to fight this monstrosity?”
“Chase, just close your eyes and imagine yourself as tall as he is.”
“But—”
“Just do it!”
Chase resigned himself not to argue and did as he was told. When he opened his eyes, he was gigantic himself.
“See, it’s not complicated. Just think what you want to be in here and it will happen.”
Chase realized he had been dealing with the illusions all wrong. He wasn’t used to defying the laws of physics beyond what his powers permitted. This was clearly not good enough inside Gaia 2’s matrix.
“Did you recover your code?” asked Chase.
“Then go back and finish your primary objective.”
“Are you sure? It seems you need my help to deal with this illusion still.”
Chase flashed Gaia’s droid a smile.
“I’m fine. Go now. I’ll deal with this on my own. Thanks for the save.”
“Very well.” Gaia’s droid disappeared.
The time had come for Oryn to retest the mind-control device, hoping it would go smoother this time. She had to salvage this situation, and while she knew Miseo was gone in his present state, she could at least try to make the best of a bad situation.
If she could channel all his anger towards Chase and rid herself of the Ultra Fury, it would be worth the losses and shit storm certain to be waiting for her back home.
Everything had been pre-programmed. The moment she released her brother from cryo-sleep, he would be dosed with mind relaxants to dull his aggression; at least, enough for her to exert some command over the mind-control device.
Still, she wouldn’t take any chances and was monitoring the full process from the captain’s chair on the Eternal Wrath’s bridge. She had already powered up her ship and was ready to self-destruct the Fury destroyer if she had to.
She wondered why she wasn’t more upset about the state of Miseo and the fact that he was already as good as dead. Sure, they had never been close as siblings, and things had become worse when he raised his hand against her during his last bouts of ego-driven delusions.
The truth was that she didn’t feel attached to Miseo and never had. She wondered if it had anything to do with Arakan taking him under his wing and grooming him for the throne as soon as he was of age.
She resented both Miseo and her father for that, but she understood that a woman on the throne would never happen outside her own fantasy. She was determined to make it happen one way or another, but she couldn’t blame her father for not even entertaining that thought. It was the way of the Furies, after all.
Her finger was still hovering over the control that would initiate the cryo-wake procedure. Her hand was slightly trembling. She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and pressed the control.
The computer took over, and the cryo-awakening procedure started on autopilot.
She heard Chase’s voice inside her head.
Arakan isn’t your father.
The thought haunted her. At first, she had thought it was nonsense, a mere strategy used to break her focus and save his own life. But then she wondered why she was the only Fury she knew with her frost abilities. Could they be something no Fury possessed? Could there be some Olympian DNA in her that would explain this difference?
She was surprised how often the thought recurred lately. If Olympian DNA gave Chase his superior power, perhaps the same applied to her.
It mattered little, though. She was first and foremost a Fury. The Olympians were a cowardly race, one she was looking forward to exterminating in due time.
Yet, if Zeus was her father, her biological one at least, could she find the strength to bring him down?
A beep on her console took her out of her thoughts and grounded her back in the moment. Soon Miseo would step out of the cryo-unit.
She applied the mental link to her right temple and checked Miseo’s state of mind. Perhaps this would give her advance warning if the flood of drugs didn’t dull his aggression enough.
She closed her eyes and activated the device. When she re-opened her eyes, she was inside the cryo-unit. She felt very cold and was surprised that it bothered her, until she adapted to the fact that these bio-feedbacks were not hers but Miseo’s.
His mind was not in chaos anymore. He barely had any thoughts at the moment, which was a good sign. She could still feel anger at the back of his mind but it wasn’t overwhelming as it had been before.
So far so good.
Arakan was back up and flying towards Chase at full speed. Struck by an idea, Chase closed his eyes and focused on the cliffs all around him. He used telekinesis to dislodge large chunks of rocks and attract them towards him.
I’m made of rocks.
When Arakan was almost upon him, Chase opened his eyes and was satisfied to see that it had worked. His giant body was covered with a thick layer of orange rock, while several massive boulders orbited around him like electrons around an atom.
When Arakan was in range, Chase, in his stone-golem form, threw a powerful right jab at Arakan’s face. He wasn’t prepared for it. The impact knocked Arakan’s head back and three of his teeth flew out.
“You’re not getting out of here alive,” said Arakan between bloody and missing teeth. “Two can play that game.”
Rocks flew upwards from the ground and quickly covered Arakan’s body.
Chase would have to get more creative.
He teleported onto Arakan’s back and grabbed him from behind, locking Arakan’s arms with his own, and interlocking his hands with a rock-grinding sound. Before Arakan could react, Chase concentrated all his energy into flying them both high up into the atmosphere.
Soon they pierced through the planet’s atmosphere as one giant fireball, their stony skins providing armor for the transition to space. When they arrived in space Chase erected a shield around them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Arakan, while trying in vain to get out of Chase’s grip.
The more Arakan struggled, the more pressure Chase exerted. Chase pushed himself to the max and accelerated faster than any ship could fly at sub-light speed while vectoring them towards the sun.
“Let’s see how you look with a tan,” said Chase.
“You fool. You’ll burn as well.”
“Not part of my plan.”
Chase closed his eyes for just a moment and imagined activating inner afterburners. They soared through space like a shooting star towards the bright, orange-burning star, which grew bigger every second.
Arakan shouted from the top of his lungs, struggling more and more.
“Let me go, you damn traitor!”
“Gladly,” said Chase.
Having attained a more than satisfactory velocity, Chase used all his power to apply crushing pressure to Arakan’s upper body. He heard the grinding of stone as he crushed Arakan’s bones.
Arakan roared from the pain.
Time was running out, so Chase released his lock, and before Arakan could react, Chase planted his knee deeply into his adversary’s stony cheekbone. Part of the already brittle rocky skin exploded on impact, revealing some flesh that was instantly burned by the nearby inferno.
Chase also felt his body burning and knew he couldn’t reverse his thrust in time; so, instead, he teleported to the other side of the sun, using his thrust to get away from the heat.
He heard Arakan scream as he was burned alive, swallowed by the Earth’s sun, which blinked slightly when Arakan’s scream stopped. Sound wasn’t supposed to travel in space, but the laws of physics didn’t apply inside Gaia 2’s matrix.
But then, a massive fireball emerged on the other side of the sun, where Chase had teleported.
What the hell?
It reached Chase’s position, and he realized it wasn’t a fireball after all. Instead, dancing flames contoured Arakan’s body while he laughed out loud.
“You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?”
I’m getting tired of this.
Chase brought his aura to the maximum and concentrated on deep-freezing temperatures. His aura resembled Oryn’s when he fought her back on the planetoid.
Let’s see how this guy deals with extreme temperature changes, shall we?
Chase unleashed a massive, concentrated wave of near-absolute-zero energy at the fire-elemental version of Arakan.
Upon impact with Arakan, his flaming body blinked for just a second before the bright blue energy wave extinguished his inner fire. Then a thick layer of ice grew around him. Chase upped the power of the wave until he was sure Arakan’s internal temperat
ure approached absolute zero.
Chase smiled but had no intention of letting Arakan find a way out of this one. So, with a swift motion of his right hand, he unleashed the most powerful shockwave he could conjure.
The icy Arakan statue exploded into a million pieces.
9
Daniel veered his StarFury hard to port to avoid incoming fire from no less than three bogies. He deployed countermeasures, and the two torpedoes previously locked on his tow fell for them and exploded a safe distance behind his craft.
He then hit the brakes and let all three pursuing fighters soar past him like shooting stars, at which point he re-engaged them and dispatched two of them with a torpedo each. He saved the last for laser canon, which didn’t take long now that he didn’t have to watch his six.
He got very close for this last kill and his StarFury burst through the explosion of the destroyed enemy fighter. For just a second, as his StarFury passed through the flames, it looked like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
“I get why Chase likes this piloting style. It’s reckless but, wow, what a rush!” he said out loud, even though he was alone.
When his radar beeped to inform him of a new wave of fighters vectoring towards his position, he decided to end the simulation.
The simulator canopy opened, and he stepped out.
“Having fun, are we?” said Sarah. “Looks like Chase is rubbing off on you.”
“Yeah, I thought, what the hell? I should try some more ballsy moves and what better place to do that than the simulator. But between you and me, I just hate waiting like this while my best friend risks his life once more for us. It’s—”
Sarah cut him short. “Frustrating, I know. I feel the same.”
Daniel smiled. If there was someone on board that could understand his feelings, it was Sarah. She was even closer to Chase, and having to wait, not knowing how he was faring, must have been tougher on her.
“Did you need anything? Any news of Chase’s progress?”
“Kvasir is doing all he can, but it’s taking too long for Chase to divert enough of Gaia 2’s computing resources.”
Armageddon Unleashed (Universe in Flames Book 7) Page 11