Slayer

by Riker Kane

  It looked like hell. It felt like hell. Breathing was like sticking my face in front of an exhaust pipe. I could even taste some of the smoke all around us.

  “Either Redgrave’s got a sense of humor or he’s really trying to prep us for whatever the hell is waiting for us in Anarchy.” The sweat dripped down my brow and over the rest of my body. It was a good thing I decided to only wear a tank-top and some jeans in here.

  Jade wore a similar outfit, a small top, and some jeans, with her body already glowing with sweat and we hadn’t even taken a step. “At least there’s only one way to go. Short Junction. We find the Obelisk, smash it, then we head back. Standard procedure.”

  “I don’t think the Shadows here will make it that simple for us. But there’s only one way to find out.”

  I walked forward across the blackened valley. Every step, the ash crunched underneath my feet. The volcanoes in the distance continued erupting to remind us of their presence. The damn wind kept blowing the smoke in our direction.

  “Road work,” I said. “The training is always harder than the big fight. Just like I told you. Up for it again?”

  I gave her a look. It took a few seconds, but the smirk formed on her lips.

  I moved into a sprint and Jade rushed after me. Never ran through this kind of heat before. Shit was agonizing. Like running inside of a sauna. But there was something satisfying, too. Pushing myself to my limits and ignoring my dry throat and all the sweat pouring down my face.

  BOOM!

  Thunder shattered the sky and the ground rumbled. I ground my feet to a halt and dug my heels into the ash. Jade drew her staff and pointed it at the sky. There were so many dark clouds billowing, I wouldn’t be surprised if some birds or something worse came swooping down.

  The ground kept shaking until the earth cracked. Black chunks of rock started to rise. I waited for something to climb out. Some lizard’s claw or some goblin’s hand. But there wasn’t anything. The ground just kept coming up in chunks until there were divots in front of us.

  “You see anything?” I asked.

  Jade shook her head.

  “Maybe they’re invisible… But I can’t hear anything—”

  Another rumble made the ground shake. Then the weirdest thing happened. The chunks of black rock started moving on their own. They fell on top of each other like something invisible was building them. Legs. Arms. A headless torso. An entire body made out of blackened earth.

  There were five of them, each of them at least ten-feet tall and as wide as trucks. They were motionless statues of rock and earth, their arms and legs thick.

  The black figures blocked the path of the valley forward. But even if there was another way around, I wouldn’t have taken it.

  “Rock golems,” Jade said. “Read about them in the bestiary but never saw them for myself.”

  “Golems… Let’s try this out.” I bent down and activated my Earth Heave. My fingers dug into the dirt. The gauntlets moved as deep as they could until they disappeared into the ground. I strained slightly as I pulled up a boulder of dirt the size of my torso.

  I put the rock over my shoulder then hurled it forward. WHAM! The chunk of dirt went sailing forward and slammed into the closest golem’s torso. It stumbled back a few steps, leaning back and teetering like it was about to fall over. Slowly, it began to tumble and landed on its back like a tree that had been cut down.

  “Timber…” I looked at the other four golems and they remained motionless. “No… That was too easy—”

  The golems suddenly raised their arms and began stomping forward.

  “Zero Blast.”

  WHOOSH! Jade nodded and fired as soon as I gave her the command. The ability was stronger and even louder than before, the blue and white beam thick enough to engulf a whole goblin. I could feel the icy frost of the energy as it sailed by me and slammed into one of the golems. The ice froze its chest and slowly began to spread through the rest of its torso but it continued its pursuit forward.

  “Keep it in place.”

  Jade moved her staff down and caught one of its legs. The golem slowed until one of its feet was frozen to the ashen ground.

  “Perfect.” I ran forward as fast as I could and hammered the golem in the leg with a straight right hand, shattering it into pieces. The giant fell forward slightly and balanced on one leg but it couldn’t take the second right hand to knock it down completely.

  “Shit!” I rolled out of the way as two golems slammed their fists into the ground. The massive thud sent dirt and ash flying into the air but I just managed to avoid them.

  The third remaining golem was waiting for me though. It reared back with both hands over its head and brought them down.

  “Power Shield!” I activated my barrier and stopped the weight from crushing me.

  Jade fired another Zero Blast to freeze the golem’s legs in place, giving me the chance to deactivate my shield and smash through its legs. It struggled on the ground but another punch to its torso turned into Mana.

  The two remaining golems continued stomping toward me. I was already warmed-up and sweating, so it wasn’t a problem for me to move out of the way. They were big but they were slow. I circled the field while Jade took them out from a distance. Her icy blasts froze them in place and made them easy work.

  WHAM! One golem down. WHAM! Then the next. I didn’t take any damage but I was sweating even worse than before.

  “Shit…” I sighed. “I don’t suppose you could make a glass of water for me to drink.”

  “If you drank water right now, you’d just sweat it out in a second.”

  “Good point.” I looked at the empty path ahead and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  I resumed my jog through the valley with Jade trailing behind me. We weren’t getting much closer to the mountain peaks but the amount of warmth was growing. The sky was burning and ash started to come down like black snowflakes.

  I kept moving until I saw something near the horizon. Purple energy resonating. A lone monument all by itself.

  “The Obelisk,” Jade said. “We take that thing down and this Junction gets shut down.”

  “Everything’s already been burned to hell, so I don’t think it’ll be missed much.”

  Seeing the Obelisk gave me a second wind and I ran even harder. The Obelisk was just a few meters away.

  BOOM!

  The nearest peak in the distance erupted like a bomb going off, loud enough to make the ground shake. I stopped for a second to regain my balance then sighed.

  “Never gonna get used to that—”

  BOOM!

  The ground shook hard enough to make Jade and I stumble into each other. I wrapped my gauntlets around her arms and held her up.

  “You all right?” I said with a growing smirk.

  She wasn’t smiling though. She was just looking over my shoulder, eyes narrowed. That look of intensity. I’d seen it before.

  I slowly turned around when I heard something moving behind me. There it was about thirty yards away from me. A black spider the size of a small house. Its skin was smooth with a dull shine. Its eyes were as black as the rest of its body, distinguishable only by the slight gloss they had. Its legs dug into the ground and kicked up some of the dirt. Its mouth opened and I saw dozens of sharp white fangs waiting to cut through me.

  “Magma Spider…” I sighed. “Redgrave didn’t say it was a hundred times as big as a normal one.”

  “You should’ve already assumed that.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Does it matter how big it is?”

  Jade still looked as intense as ever. After what we did the other night, she could’ve distracted me. But the grin on her lips wasn’t because of that. No, she knew something else was coming.

  “SCREEEE!”

  The giant spider squealed and suddenly flames gathered in its mouth. A giant red fireball shot out and came racing toward us.

  “Power Shield!” I threw my gauntlets up and the fireball ricoch
eted off the barrier. “Asshole tried to catch me off-guard…”

  The spider kept its mouth open. Red and orange lava began pouring out. The ground bubbled as it spilled all around the spider. It didn’t stop spraying the ground until it was surrounded completely.

  “The floor is lava,” I said. “That’s gonna make it tricky to get to…”

  “I wonder…” Jade fired a Zero Blast and started freezing the lava on the ground. The ice hissed into steam but the molten lava oozing from the spider’s mouth began to harden.

  “That’ll do. Clear the path for me, Jade.”

  I ran forward and blocked another fireball with my Power Shield. The spider screamed again and more of its lava spilled out. Some of it caught me on the arm. Just a few drops burned through my skin and stung like hell.

  “Shit…”

  The massive creature swung with its giant legs and I just barely managed to roll out of the way.

  “Let’s go, Jade!”

  She sent another cold blast to the lava and hardened the ground, giving me another path to move around the spider’s back. I got near its back legs and started swinging. BANG! One punch. BANG! Two punches. BANG! Three punches. The bastard was huge but its legs still crunched from the power of the gauntlets.

  “SCREEE!”

  The spider spun around quickly and caught me with two legs. I stumbled back, my feet ripping through the ashen ground and sending more dirt into the air.

  Its eyes locked on me, the spider stomped forward but a Zero Blast to its side turned its attention. It quickly spun back around and started charging right for Jade.

  “Dammit.” I reached my hands into the dirt and pulled out a chunk.

  Jade stood her ground, her staff at her hip as she blasted the spider right in its face with a concentrated beam. It slowed but kept moving forward.

  “Get away from her!” I sent the chunk of dirt sailing and—CRACK—caught the spider in the back to slow it down. “Not done yet!”

  I ran forward then jumped in the air before pounding the ground with a Seismic Quake.

  “SCREEEE!” The spider squealed again as it tried to regain its balance but it was stuck in place. That wasn’t enough to stop it from opening its mouth and sending more magma into the air.

  “Oh, shit! Get to cover!”

  Jade darted off to the side of the open valley as the lava fell on the burned land like fiery rain. My Power Shield did enough to stop the lava from burning through me. It felt like ages before it finally stopped.

  I survived without taking much damage but now the ground was littered with pools of bubbling lava. Just one wrong step and… Well, I didn’t wanna think about what would happen to my feet.

  The spider didn’t relent. It just kept spraying the ground all around it. Jade tried to pick up where she left off but fireballs from the creature’s mouth forced her to back off.

  I had to do something. Get close enough to punch it. Some combination of my abilities.

  The fatigue was getting to me. The heat was making me sweat like crazy. I was running out of time even if the spider wasn’t going right after me.

  I had only one chance at this. It was a risk I had to take.

  “Jade!” I called out to the other side of the valley. “I just need a path. One path!”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. Her Zero Blast slammed into the ground right in front of me, freezing the ground and the lava burning through it. She moved the beam forward in a line headed right for the spider.

  I walked forward through the hardened magma as the spider turned its attention toward me.

  “SCREEEEEEEEE!”

  “Power Shield!”

  A fireball came flying toward me. But I kept my barrier up and blocked it, moving through the path Jade made for me as my endurance drained.

  Twenty meters away. Fifteen meters. Ten.

  Close enough.

  I leaped into the air and—CRASH—activated a Seismic Quake that shook the ground. The spider stumbled in its place unable to move.

  “Hit it!”

  I called it out and Jade moved her beam right to the spider to slow it down. I jumped over the last pool of lava in my path and landed right in front of the spider.

  The creature stared back at me with a dozen blinking black eyes. It opened its mouth with a hiss and I saw the lava beginning to gather.

  “Not this time.” I slammed my teeth into its mouth and cracked its razor-sharp teeth. The spider stumbled back but I kept moving forward. WAP! WAP! WAP! Left and right hands bashed its face in.

  Jade’s beam kept slowing it down, making it easy to parry away its swipes. I hit its limbs hard enough I heard its bones break.

  The spider stumbled in its place as my assault continued. Hard crosses to its face spilled blood around the lava around us.

  “SCREEE!”

  The creature suddenly rose with its front legs up. But that just gave me the perfect spot to hit. I aimed right at its underside and swung. CRACK! The weight of the gauntlet ripped through its soft belly until I was tearing through its insides. I kept pushing, trying to rip through the spider completely but it suddenly exploded into a shower of Mana.

  The colorful orbs of red, green, and blue energy joined the ash continuing to float down. The remnants of the spider disappeared, both its boiling lava and steaming blood gone completely.

  I let out a sigh of relief as Jade walked up next to me.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She looked over at the nearby Obelisk and sighed. “Never better.”

  “It’s too hot. Let’s close the Volcanic Valley.”

  39: Final Warning

  Enzo Drake

  Level 48 Slayer

  (0 levels available)

  Hit Points 100

  Endurance 50

  Strength 25

  Speed 23

  Durability 23 (+1)

  Control 22 (+2)

  I double-checked my communicator to make sure I was reading it right. Would’ve thought beating a giant spider and some golems was worth more than three levels. Didn’t care too much though. Not with my body trying to recover from standing next to some active volcanoes.

  The glass of water disappeared. I was so damn thirsty I started crunching the ice.

  Jade sat across from me and gulped on her drink just the same.

  “Uh… Kids these days… I’ll leave the pitcher here.” Ruthie looked confused at both of us before stepping away.

  Jade and I washed away all of the soot and sweat that had built-up on our trip to the Volcanic Valley. Then we headed out for some food to relax for the rest of the day.

  It was a quiet afternoon in The Fancy Diner. All the patrons were the same kind of people you’d expect from downtown Newmire. Just honest city folks looking for a meal and a place to relax. It was exactly the kind of scene I needed to forget about all the shit I just saw.

  I was tired but I was thirsty and hungry. A bite of my burger and some fries satisfied me just as much as the water I’d gulped down.

  Jade poured herself another glass and sighed. “This is what it was like at the District. We would spend all day training, fighting, practicing… Then we would get time to ourselves. We refueled with a good meal then put our heads down to get ready for the next day.”

  “You didn’t get bored with it? Or tired? Or both?”

  “We had our days off from time to time. Sometimes the Junction Room would get shut down for maintenance. It was exhausting but it was satisfying. You know what it’s like. You ever get tired of going to the gym?”

  “Never really thought about it. Just something I always did.”

  “That’s how it was for us. Most recruits who weren’t good enough to make it as an Omega left eventually. It’s an easy decision to make one way or the other.”

  I took another bite of my burger and looked out the window. “Easy decision…”

  “You ever think about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About… being
an Omega.”

  “Hmph.” I scoffed at the thought. “I was always sorry for every poor bastard who decided to suit up and join the cause. Drawn in by fancy brochures and ads on TV. No chance…”

  I picked up my burger for another bite but Jade was staring at me, not eating or drinking. Just focusing her eyes like she meant it.

  “You were serious, huh?”

  “You’re good at it, Enzo. You’re strong. You know how to fight. And you’ll have a leg up on other new recruits.”

  “As soon as I pull my dad out, that’ll be the end of it. I’m pretty sure the Legion is gonna be pissed anyway. Doubt they’d wanna just throw me a uniform and sign me up after the shit I’m doing behind their back.”

  “If that’s the way you feel—”

  “That’s the way I feel. I…”

  Jade was always headstrong. I never met a woman as determined and intense as her. But now I could see how bothered she was. I let out a sigh to stop myself from getting worked up.

  “I know what it means for you to be an Omega. It’s important to you. And I support that. But I’m not an Omega. I’ll never be an Omega. That doesn’t mean we can’t be cool.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off me. I was almost worried for a second. But a smile came to her lips and she nodded slowly. “…I was just thinking. It’d be nice to fight alongside you again. Officially. You should see how tight my armor suit is.”

  “What’s the point of seeing you in armor when I’ve already seen everything on underneath?”

  “Not at the table, Mr. Drake.” She gave me a wink and poked her fork at her salad.

  I chuckled and picked up my burger for another bite. “You know… I’ll admit. It would be kinda nice to keep doing something active…”

  Jade moved her stare over my shoulder. She’d stopped eating. She was barely moving.

  “Jade?” I turned around and saw him.

  Castleberry slowly made his way toward our table. I hadn’t seen the asshole in so long, I almost forgot what he looked like. But a bald, flat-nosed bastard in a suit always seemed to make himself stand out.

  He walked right up to us then looked down at me. “Mr. Drake.”