by Drew Hayes
He did linger long enough to see Lodestar and Quorum out on the streets together, organizing the broken ranks of the AHC superheroes and spearheading the organization. Neither of them would give the order to fire on him, at least not today, but tensions were running high all over Ridge City. A secret guild of villainy had been uncovered, a trusted AHC leader turned out to be a criminal, thousands of civilians were dead or injured, and the city was facing millions in property damage. It wasn’t the sort of place that was secure for a meta without AHC approval. It might not even be safe for the capes, once the dust settled.
Scanning the area as he moved, Doctor Mechaniacal made certain that every guild member he’d been tracking was out of the brawl. Some were in custody, arrested before Balaam’s betrayal, but he would free them through the legal system—already he had lawyers ready to tear apart the false case Apollo had built against them. Others were dead, killed by capes or gang members—it was impossible to tell. They’d done their best to make Balaam’s pawns pay, and there was little sense in trying to pay back the AHC for anyone they’d killed. Capes would be going in the ground too; this day had left a wake of loss for everyone. Better to put them back on the path of peace, if it was possible. Otherwise, there would just be more graves to dig before all was said and done.
Just to be on the safe side, Doctor Mechaniacal took the long way around Ridge City, making sure that none of the countless capes had the ability to track him back to the lair where his fragile human body was waiting. This route had the added benefit of taking him past the riverfront docks, where he caught sight of a remarkable ship pulling into harbor. It was massive, protected by an energy field and spinning turrets, fashioned from a material not even his sensors could identify. There were only a few people in the world with both the mind and the resources to create a vehicle like that, and since Wade hadn’t done it himself, that narrowed the list considerably.
Unless Tech Lord had found a very well-paying job or Tyranny had decided to leave her nation to invade foreign soil, it looked as though the Champions’ Congress would soon be in complete attendance for the first time in over a decade.
Professor Quantum was back in Ridge City, and that presented a slew of problems all its own.
Chapter 91
Of all the abilities Ivan had—and there were more than anyone else actually knew about—flying wasn’t among them. True, he could cast a spell of flight that allowed him to slip the bonds of gravity, but the process felt unnatural and gave him a queasy stomach. Flying simply wasn’t in his repertoire, which was why he used a different method to take to the skies as he cannonballed around the park.
Ivan leapt through the air, twisting about and conjuring a small circle of force beneath his foot when he wanted to change direction. Using it as a midair stepping stone, he would thrust off with his incredible, magically-augmented strength. While the method was imprecise, that flaw could be compensated for through lots of training, which Ivan had certainly acquired in his more mischievous days.
This method also had the benefit of making his movements unpredictable, which was clearly frustrating Balaam to no end. He threw spell after spell at Ivan, only for Ivan to jump out of the way at the last moment.
The shadow minions clawed at the tatters of Ivan’s suit as he moved, shredding what remained with their knife-like claws. He smacked them away off-handedly, destroying the annoyances easily. They were meant to distract him, not to do real damage. Balaam knew his opponent wouldn’t be defeated by minions.
On the other hand, Balaam’s fire wards were causing Ivan more trouble. Whenever he managed to duck an attack and draw near, one of the burning spheres would launch itself between him and Balaam and then explode. They didn’t do much damage, but the burst was enough to let Balaam slip away. The sorcerer was employing a smart, strategic method. Ivan’s weakness had always been that he lacked much in the way of ranged tactics—the few spells he had took too long to cast, and Balaam knew how to ward against them. To finish the fight, Ivan would need to get in close, and that was exactly what Balaam was preventing. He probably planned to keep firing long-range spells, wearing Ivan down bit by bit until either the ward or Ivan fell.
Ivan landed on the shattered ground of what had once been a lovely downtown park, though it was no longer recognizable as such. Now the grass burned, the earth cracked, and the few surviving trees were warped and misshapen. This whole place would be the magical equivalent of a toxic spill-site for years to come; Ivan’s wards were the only thing keeping that energy from leaking out into the rest of the nearby city. They couldn’t go on like this for long. Sooner or later, the capes would finish up their work, and when they arrived, Balaam would try to use them as hostages. That was assuming they didn’t come for Ivan first, since he was still wearing the blood of a murdered cape on his face. No, he couldn’t let Balaam have his way.
Above him, more flame spheres dripped from Balaam’s staff, replacing the ones Ivan had already detonated. Shadows reformed, pooling into bigger, hungrier monsters. Balaam flapped a bit farther away, keeping a wall of defenses between himself and Ivan. Despite all this casting, his magic didn’t appear to be depleting in the slightest. Whatever source Balaam had drawn from, it clearly wasn’t running dry anytime soon. Tiring him out was off the table.
The whispers in his ears grew louder, and Ivan pulled more power from within. It was restless; having tasted freedom so recently left it stirring for more. Part of his brain filled with gleefully bloody images, but Ivan shoved them aside. He had the focus of battle upon him, and the weight of those counting on his victory helped him stay in the proper mindset. All along his skin, the etchings glowed brighter.
Balaam’s staff was pointed toward him, a spell like black lightning glowing on its tip. He would release it any second, forcing Ivan to dodge, to stay off-balance. All his little tricks to manipulate the battlefield. All the scheming and thought. Ivan would have found it impressive were it not turned against him. Instead, he just saw them as petty, childish tricks. Balaam had wanted to see Fornax so badly, to reach the same legendary status as his idol.
It was time to show Balaam exactly what a legend was made of.
This time, when Ivan leapt up from the ground, it crumbled beneath him, leaving behind a small crater where nothing would ever grow again. He soared upward on the momentum of his jump. Balaam grinned as he fired off the spell. Ivan could see it now—Balaam knew Ivan would dodge. His spells were meant to control him, not injure. They’d both been trying to wear the other down before attacking in earnest. The difference was that Ivan knew how to discard a plan when it wasn’t working anymore.
Ivan wove a shield of magic around his arm before throwing it in front of him and taking the black lightning’s strike just below the wrist. Pain—how long had it been since he felt that?—burned his flesh, yet Ivan’s course didn’t waver. The shadows sprang forward from the sky, but this time, he didn’t let them get close. Ivan released a pulse of the dark magic that dwelled inside him. For a moment, the whispers were so loud he couldn’t think, but then mercifully faded. Short as it had been, the pulse was enough to rend every one of the shadows apart; they fell to the ground, twisting and burning as they landed.
Balaam’s altered face wasn’t smiling anymore. He waved his free hand, putting all of the flame spheres between him and Ivan. Rather than take another shot with his staff, Balaam turned upward toward the ceiling of the ward trapping them. It didn’t take much to figure out his plan: Balaam wanted to knock Ivan away and then break through the barrier. Once he was free, he could slip away. He’d be free to do more scheming and attack from the shadows. He’d be free to come after Ivan’s family again.
“No, Balaam. We finish this today.”
The first sphere hit Ivan dead in the face, but he conjured more discs of force beneath his feet and shoved off just as the shockwave struck. It took almost all of his strength, but he pushed through, refusing to be knocked aside. Regular fire couldn’t touch him, but the magical
flames burned at his clothes; some were even powerful enough to singe his flesh. Ivan paid the charred skin no mind. His eyes were on the next sphere, ready to jump through it, and then the next, and the next. Ready to do whatever it took to stop Balaam for good.
Later, Tori would describe it as seeing the flaming visage of Death burst forth from within the final sphere. Ivan had fought his way through five of them—five that had burned his skin and turned his clothes into scarcely more than ash. His undergarments survived, thanks solely to the fact that a life in villainy had taught him the importance of extra-durable boxers, but otherwise, all that could be seen was fire, skin, and blood as Ivan sprang through the final explosion.
From Ivan’s perspective, all he saw was a tremendous amount of fire, and then suddenly a demon slicing at his barrier with its staff. Balaam was so focused on the task that he didn’t even notice Ivan until the man’s bloody hand closed around his gray, muscular shoulder. Balaam’s head, now with a thick brow and a pair of horns atop it, whipped around to find Ivan staring at him, strands of hair smoking and the blood burned to a copper-brown on his face.
“First off, you have a terrible idea of what real demons look like.” Ivan’s punch landed directly in Balaam’s face. Whatever protection the demonic form offered, it wasn’t enough as the two went tumbling down, Ivan refusing to yield his grip now that he finally had the sorcerer in his clutches.
“Secondly, you would dare turn on our guild? After everything we did for you?” This time, the punch was to the stomach just as they were landing, putting Balaam’s gut in a pincer maneuver with the earth. Though he was coughing in pain, Balaam swept his staff around, trying to knock Ivan away and regain his distance.
“Not happening.” Ivan caught the staff in his free right hand and wrenched it from the sorcerer’s grip. With a mighty squeeze, he snapped it in half, letting loose an explosion of magic that left everything up to his forearm smoking and bloody. The staff’s destruction caused Balaam to ripple as his demon form melted away and revealed the familiar face of the guild’s traitor.
“How did you—”
Ivan jerked Balaam up from the ground before he could finish, clenching the gory remains of his right arm into a fist once more. “Third, you tried to kill my apprentice. My student. My friend.” This time, there was a scream, along with a bloody stream of vomit, when Ivan slammed his fist into Balaam’s stomach.
It was so loud, in fact, that Ivan didn’t hear the sound of his own barrier being broken.
“Your organs are more pulp than anything right now, but I’m sure you’ve got enough magic left to keep yourself alive, so let’s move on to your biggest mistake of the day.” Ivan reached forward and wrapped his fingers, some of which were so sliced up from the exploding staff that he could see the bones, around the top of Balaam’s head.
“Please, Ivan, we can make a deal here,” Balaam pleaded, the blood of his vomit staining his teeth red. They matched his irises.
“Four, you tried to murder my children. We’re both going to hell, Balaam, but you’re going today.” Ivan tightened his fingers and began to squeeze when a gentle hand fell across his forearm.
He was so shocked to see someone else there, his powerful wards effortlessly destroyed, that he nearly flexed his fingers and ended Balaam quickly. Only Ivan’s exceptional self-control kept his grip steady as he turned to look at who had made it through.
“Ivan, your anger is righteous, and you have undeniable cause to kill this man. But while you only believed your children dead, others are not so lucky today. Please, if you will, I ask that you yield his punishment to me.”
If he’d been asked a moment prior, Ivan would have said there was no one else in the world he would allow the pleasure of killing Balaam. But that would be because in his rage, he’d forgotten one of the guild’s most quiet, dangerous, merciless members. Kristoph stood before him, all sense of childlike wonder wiped from his face, his hand resting on Ivan’s battered forearm.
Balaam looked between them, the resignation of death quickly turning to panic. “Wait! Wait, I didn’t kill them. That was Bombastic; I made sure he was the one who did the deed, not me.”
“And he is answering for his sins,” Kristoph replied. “But it is the fault of the man who wields the knife, as much as the knife itself, when a life is taken. You gave the order, Balaam, and now your soul bears the mark of your sin. But I will not steal from one with a righteous claim to vengeance.”
Behind him, Ivan could hear Hephaestus land. Some apprentice, ignoring his explicit directions yet again. She was safe, as were Rick and Beth. When this was over, no matter what happened to him, Ivan would go on knowing the people he cared about were okay. But from what Kristoph said, not everyone in town would have that comfort. Balaam had robbed at least a few parents of that, and tempting as it was to crush his skull, that torture would be short-lived.
“Kristoph, I’ll yield my claim to you on one condition: nothing quick. Make him suffer.”
“He will taste a hundred times the agony he has unleashed upon the world.”
“Still feels low, but I guess it will have to do. He’s all yours, Kristoph. I yield my claim of vengeance to you.” Ivan released Balaam, who tried to scramble away, waving his hands in a desperate attempt to call forth a magic that would see him to safety.
Kristoph simply shook his head. “No magic can save you now.” From his back, the pair of wings began to grow, stretching into the sky. But they were not the bat-like wings that Balaam had fashioned for himself, nor were they the fluffy white wings that people associated with angels.
No, Kristoph’s wings were made of blades. Stained straight razors, chipped scissor halves, rusted butcher’s knives, they all rattled in a soul-quaking symphony as they stretched behind him, drops of blood falling from each of their tips. Slowly, Kristoph reached down and plucked up Balaam from the ground as if he weighed nothing at all. With a look to Ivan over his shoulder, Kristoph flapped those nightmarish wings once, and the two of them were gone.
“Um... Ivan.” Hephaestus approached his side slowly, as if she was afraid Kristoph would reappear to snatch her as well. “Do we really have no idea what Kristoph is?”
“He’ll tell you, if you truly want to know,” Ivan said, flexing his hand and realizing for the first time how much it hurt. It would be at least a day before the thing was fully healed, maybe a day and a half. “But no one ever does.”
“Then, how do you know he’ll tell you?”
“Xelas asked once, back when we first found him and figured out what he did,” Ivan explained. “She took him into a room and politely asked for an explanation of exactly what he was and how his powers worked. And he told her, after which Xelas went straight to Doctor Mechaniacal and had him purge the memories of the entire day from her hard drive. All she would say is that there are some things she’s happier not knowing about the world.”
“Xelas did that?” Hephaestus looked at the empty spot where Kristoph and Balaam had vanished. “Yeah, I think I’m okay with that bit of mystery in my life. What’s the plan now?”
“The capes are probably restoring order, which means we need to be out of here before they start wondering about that guy who was beating the shit out of Apollo,” Ivan said. “I’d like to get home, take a shower, and then go check on my kids.”
A sound like worried breath being let out through someone’s teeth, and then run through a voice distortion program, came from Hephaestus’s helmet.
“Yeah, about that shower. I might have forgotten to mention that before I went to save your kids, there was something of an... incident at the house.”
* * *
Apollo saw the smoke before he ever got close enough to make out details, but he still held on to hope. An attack was always possible; it didn’t mean the jailbreak was successful. He doubled down on his speed. The worst of his injuries from the fight with Fornax had already healed, which allowed him to fly faster as he raced the trouble that Rookstone was facing.
It was a race he’d lost, he discovered as he floated down to find whole sections of the upper jail destroyed or burning. The few guards who were still alive were seriously injured, and even with swift medical attention, making it through the night looked to be a long shot. Apollo canvased the area as fast as he could, searching for any sign of the criminals that had caused such damage. When none met his eye, he found the door to the lower cells, the giant vertical tunnel where the more powerful metas were stored. Normally, one needed clearance from three different sources to access the area. That was less true today, as the massive door had been blown apart, leaving a giant hole into the prison’s depths.
Apollo descended carefully, for not even he could take a whole jail’s worth of metas on by himself. A few guards were still alive, and it seemed like a majority of the cells had gone into automatic lock-down mode. Some were ripped open or just unoccupied without explanation, but plenty others still had their prisoners safely stored inside. He continued to go lower, all the way down to the bottom of the shaft.
His greatest fear was confirmed as he landed. All of the cells here were empty, torn apart through various means and emptied of their contents. This had been the true target, the bottom floor, where the most dangerous metas ever captured were stored. Some had been powerful enough to wipe out entire cities in the fight to bring them in.
And now, because of a plan he’d played a part in, they were all loose on the world once again.