by Corey Tate
Scott kept quiet, continuing to inch back.
Suddenly, Terminus grew impatient.
“Why are you walking away from me?” he questioned. “I want to talk.”
Terminus extended an arm, and a giant wave of water more than a hundred feet high rushed toward Scott at a breathtaking speed.
I am about to die, Scott thought, accepting his fate. I failed, and now he’s—
—You can do what he can do! Plegaborne yelled. This dimension is controlled by thought alone!
Scott acted on instinct. He extended his arms, and the wave evaporated into nothing.
“I see that you have found the secret,” Terminus said, smiling and walking slowly toward Scott. “But that’s no issue. The comet that will reverse the Gateway is an hour away at most, and you don’t have what it takes to challenge me.”
“Why are you doing this?” Scott suddenly asked, catching Terminus off guard. “This doesn’t make any sense. You’re already the ruler of Armadron. Why do you want Earth?”
Terminus stopped mid-step and smiled.
“You haven’t guessed?” he said.
Scott shook his head no.
“I want to rule Earth because I—”
Terminus choked back his words, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. His voice took on a deep, scratching tone that sounded older than the universe itself.
“I’m bored. I have grown tired of the Higher Beings.”
Scott didn’t know what was going on.
—Acoadis? Plegaborne thought aloud.
—Who’s Acoadis? Is he a Higher—
“Ahh, Plegaborne,” the being that was Acoadis said through Terminus’s form. “I knew it was you. You have the stench of the dead.”
—I did not know it was you, Plegaborne admitted. You hide your form well.
“I’ve had a couple years of practice,” the Higher Being answered through Terminus.
—Years? Plegaborne asked.
“Yes.” Acoadis smiled. “This Armadronian has been getting his power out of the Chaos Dimension for quite some time, and he did not realize that once he entered the Chaos Dimension, he might not exit alone.”
—I see, Plegaborne muttered. Well, then you and I have a problem, Acoadis.
“Oh?” the demon asked. “What sort of problem?”
—I wish for revenge on that man. He enslaved me and stripped me of some of my powers. I wish to make him pay.
“Hmmm . . . ,” Acoadis mused, scratching Terminus’s chin with his hand. “I shall let you have your revenge after I take control of Earth. You see, this man has created new powers in these Armadronians and, once they travel to Earth, they will still be able to use them! This means that, perhaps for the first time, a Higher Being such as myself will also be able to use my full abilities in their dimension!”
—I see, Plegaborne projected his thoughts. A good plan, even without the technology that we need from Zwaetaru.
“Yes, yes, it is,” Acoadis agreed. “And once I have seen that I can use my abilities, I will call other Higher Beings to Earth, and we shall all reap the benefits! No more will we be physical abominations, like we are on Irri. No more will a mere fraction of our power be called upon when needed. No more will we be just a Conjurer’s plaything.”
Acoadis raised a fist in the air and brought it back down in triumph.
“Get out of me!” Terminus screamed, momentarily regaining control.
Acoadis remained still for a second, fighting with Terminus. Acoadis regained control, sliding back into Terminus’s form wearing a smooth, triumphant grin.
“Terminus has grown weak,” Acoadis explained. “I lent him my power for him to sustain his influence over the Conjurers that I enslaved, so that we could take over this planet. He was slipping, and so I let him stand upright again, for a short while. Now it is my turn to control this form.” His eyes blazed with fury. “No longer shall our breed of Higher Beings reside in the Chaos Dimension. I have grown tired of the power of the mental. I wish to feel the joys of the physical!”
“You can’t,” Scott said simply.
“Why not, little half-Armadronian?” Acoadis mocked.
“Because I won’t let you.”
He looked at Acoadis and imagined him crushed up in a microscopic box with an unbreakable lock on the outside.
It didn’t work.
Acoadis pointed a finger at Scott and laughed at him uncontrollably, doubling over in Terminus’s body.
“That will not work on me, boy!” Acoadis said. “I am all-powerful! I have lived millions of years! There is not a thing that you can imagine that I cannot counteract. Whatever you can throw at me, I will throw back tenfold.”
That gave Scott an idea. There were currently two mental portals open. One inside Terminus’s mind and one inside Scott’s. The first time that Terminus had come into the Chaos Dimension, he had used Plegaborne as a shield.
“Give me your most powerful attack. I will not be harmed,” Acoadis goaded Scott, bracing himself.
—I know what you are thinking, boy, Plegaborne thought. Do not do it. You promised me my revenge.
—I lied, Scott thought.
He thrust out a hand and placed it on Acoadis’s chest.
“What are you doing, boy?” Acoadis laughed. “Does this form please you?”
Scott concentrated harder.
He pushed with all his thoughts, using Plegaborne’s essence as a shield. Scott pushed against Acoadis, forcing him out of Terminus’s body.
“Stop this!” Acoadis screamed, attempting to push back.
Scott continued to push, and Plegaborne tried to wriggle out from between them. Scott kept Plegaborne’s essence in place with his mind and kept pushing.
Acoadis was almost out of Terminus’s body when Scott started to lose strength. Acoadis pushed on the barriers of Scott’s will until Scott was the one who was going to be pushed out of his own body, and Plegaborne would assume control.
Don’t give up, kid. We need to beat them. Scott was surprised to hear Terminus’s voice in his head, and he persevered.
He pushed harder than ever, and this time he succeeded in forcing the demon out of Terminus’s body. He once again forced Plegaborne into the center, using him as a shield.
The second that Acoadis and Plegaborne were completely separated from them, Scott created a portal and mentally jumped into it, taking his and Terminus’s minds back to Armadron.
The Final Battle
Scott blinked and heard someone yell. He looked up and saw Nick standing up, levitating a sword with his mind.
It was pointed at Kane’s heart.
Kane was standing still, dumbfounded.
“This is for killing my parents “This is for coming into my home, on my birthday, and killing my parents before I could even blow out the candles.” Nick stared Kane down with all the anger in the universe. “And for messing with my head.”
Nick mentally pushed the sword, and it went clean through Kane, killing him instantly.
Kane dropped to the ground and landed next to another figure.
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Scott said to Nick, walking over to him.
Scott came to a stop next to Terminus, who had appeared and was now lying motionless on the ground next to Kane.
“Yeah, I know,” Nick said, not taking his eyes off Kane. “He’s dead.”
“No,” Scott replied, pointing at Terminus. “He can’t. I’ll explain later.”
Scott looked around. Everyone surrounding them had unfrozen, and they were all looking at him. Even the Conjurers were slowly coming out of their stupor.
“There doesn’t have to be a battle. He doesn’t have any power anymore,” Scott said, pointing again at Terminus.
Even as Scott watched, flakes of skin slowly began to fall off Terminus’s body, and his face turned as white as a sheet.
“Is he dying?”
“Yes,” Artam said. He had suddenly appeared next to Scott.
“Wha
t is going on?” Nick asked. “What about the Conjurers?”
Hundreds of Icranu were gathering around them now, watching Terminus die.
“Their minds are still interconnected with his. I believe that they will die as he dies,” Thaught commented sadly.
“What about the Upgrades?” Seth interjected hopefully. “Will they die too?”
“No.” It was Claire who spoke. “Terminus convinced them to go to Earth. He couldn’t control their minds. He just . . . twisted them. Same as his loyal followers.”
As Terminus was crumbling away to nothing, he whispered something, and part of his ear blew away in the wind.
“What did he say?” Nick asked, now holding the sword to Terminus’s neck.
Scott knelt and put his ear next to Terminus’s mouth.
“What was that?” Scott asked.
“Tell Jared I s–said hi, k–kid.”
Scott’s heart stopped.
He pulled his head back and looked into Terminus’s eyes. They were now his dad’s eyes. Terminus was saying something else and was smiling.
“You and J–Jared were . . . my gr–greatest experiments in the Six Worlds C–Complex.”
“What do you mean?” Scott asked numbly, but he felt like screaming. Nothing in the world made sense anymore. “What do you mean? ”
Nick put a hand on Scott’s shoulder. Everyone else was silent, straining to hear.
“Earth, Ar–Armadron, Zwaetaru, G–Ghorn, Byaeter, Irri . . . did you r–really think . . .”
Terminus slowly smiled at him, and his eyes became glassy.
The self-proclaimed ruler of Armadron took one last final breath, and then he was gone.
The crowd was silent for a couple seconds, and then . . .
“Yes!” someone screamed. “Yes!”
The crowd roared in approval, and everyone was suddenly cheering. Their entire little army from all around the planet was cheering. It was the happiest day on Armadron.
Scott had never felt so empty and alone in his entire life.
Out of nowhere, all the Conjurers dropped to their faces, dead in the dirt.
Suddenly someone screamed.
Scott heard a slight rustling noise in the once-again silent crowd.
Claire quickly stretched her hand out just in time.
A girl was approaching Scott. She must have been running extremely fast, but now she was slowly running through Claire’s force field, stretching it like a balloon.
The girl had a fierce scowl on her face, and she was holding a bloody knife. When she was just a few feet away from Scott, she raised the knife in slow motion and pointed it at Scott’s neck. Claire promptly closed her force field and crushed the girl like used aluminum foil, killing her instantly.
Seventeen people in a straight line as far back as a quarter mile dropped to the ground in the same breathtaking moment. Scott noticed as they fell that their necks were slit open.
“They are here!” Thaught bellowed. “Battle positions!”
Everyone scrambled to his or her battle groups. Scott and Thaught immediately moved toward the Gateway to stop anyone from getting through. Seth assumed command of his section, Artam disappeared into the crowd, and the other teams got into their foxholes and covered their sectors.
Scott took a second to look around as he got to the place Thaught had described where the Gateway would appear. He stood next to Thaught before something large was thrown at his face.
He looked at the boulder that was about to strike him, and it fell to the ground, knocked away by Thaught, who had taken a giant lizard-bear form.
Scott turned toward him and stared.
“I’ve got your back!” Thaught yelled. “Take him out!”
He looked around for who had thrown the boulder, and he caught the eyes of a boy standing less than a hundred feet away from him.
The boy suddenly ran to him, and Scott shot fire at him. The boy ran straight through the fire, not even batting an eyelash.
Scott tried water next, expecting the boy to get blown off his feet.
The boy kept running, completely unharmed.
“Terminus is dead!” A lot of the friendlies were screaming now, trying to get some of Terminus’s followers to turn around.
Thaught looked around and noticed that they were down to about six hundred already and were up against nearly eight hundred enemies. Some enemy forces were turning around and running away, but not nearly enough of them.
* * *
Scott threw lightning at the boy, but the boy shook it off and kept coming.
The boy reached Scott and threw out a fist.
Ohhhhh, sh—, Scott thought.
Suddenly he found himself twenty feet behind the boy. The boy wheeled around, angry that he had missed his target.
Then Scott remembered: he had touched Terminus and copied some of his curse from him!
Scott tried a new tactic this time. He focused on the curse from Claire and used his mind to try to read the thoughts of his attacker.
His mind was flung off an impenetrable barrier. He staggered back just as the boy started to run forward again.
He’s unstoppable, Scott thought.
* * *
Others were having trouble as well.
Nick was in the middle of the field, throwing metal knives at a man who stretched his body out of the way like rubber. The man was taunting Nick and getting closer.
I’m gonna beat the freaking snot out of you, Nick thought, creating a large metal bear trap that erupted out of the ground.
The trap clamped shut just as the man stretched his body horizontally and narrowly escaped.
“Bravo,” the man said, clapping his elastic hands enthusiastically, “but not good enough.”
* * *
Claire was next to her brother, Billy, standing defensively back to back. They were each battling someone. Claire was using her telekinesis to hurl imaginary walls at the girl she was fighting, who seemed light as a feather and was incredibly fast. Claire suddenly wrapped her in a force field, and the girl’s eyebrows furrowed. Claire yelled out, released the force field, and the girl dropped to the ground extremely fast and hard. She created an impact crater at least six feet deep and then came out a half second later.
What the hell kind of curse is that?! Claire thought.
“How ya doin’, sis?” Billy suddenly asked her over his shoulder.
“Not good. You?”
“Uh . . . okay,” Billy summarized. “Some family reunion, huh?”
Billy was blind, but he was using his enhanced precognition to fight hand to hand against an Upgrade who was just as fast as he was, if not faster.
“You can’t keep this up,” the brown-haired boy attacking Billy said smugly. “I memorize physical movements and copy them instantly. It’s only a matter of time before I kill you.”
Billy just gritted his teeth and relied on his curse to tell him a second early what the boy’s movements would be.
* * *
I can do this, Scott thought as the boy attempted to land another punch at him.
This time, he dodged the punch by angling his jaw in a different direction. The boy continued to try to punch Scott at an alarming speed, but Scott had lightning-fast reflexes now.
“Hey, Scott!” Nick called from somewhere. “A little help would be nice!”
Scott lost focus for a second and was awarded with a heavy blow to the face.
He felt the familiar tingling feeling in his limbs. He had copied the kid’s ability when he got punched.
He was flung back, and the boy immediately rushed forward, pressing his advantage.
Scott let this second punch hit him, but this time the boy’s hand was flung back.
Scott didn’t waste any time. Nick needed help.
He swallowed his disgust and thrust his fist into the boy’s open mouth. Scott’s fist punched through the back of his throat, as expected.
“I guess you’re not as tough on the inside as you are on t
he outside,” Scott said as the boy dropped to the ground, dead.
“Scott!” Nick yelled. “Anytime!”
Scott teleported to Nick using Terminus’s curse and immediately saw what the problem was.
Nick was facing three people now, and he only had one other ally fighting next to him.
Scott immediately acted and punched through the back of the boy he was sneaking behind.
There was no blood, no hole, and no wound. His hand just disappeared and came out the other side like a portal.
“You see what I mean?” Nick said as he flung a piece of metal at someone who simply bent their body around it. “That’s a problem.”
Scott pulled his hand back out, and the boy whipped around. He smiled at Scott and thrust his hand inside him.
The boy somehow solidified his hand, and it stopped being intangible for a second.
Scott would have been dead if he hadn’t subconsciously copied the boy’s ability and become intangible himself.
The boy’s hand harmlessly passed through him, and Scott stepped back.
As an experiment, he punched the boy in the face as hard as he could while remaining intangible.
Just as he predicted, the boy became intangible as well.
Scott’s fist connected with the boy’s jaw, and he combined both his intangible power and the unstoppable power that he had just copied from the other boy.
Apparently, if two people are intangible, then they can cause bodily harm to one another. Which is why Scott’s fist plowed straight through the boy’s face, this time spewing blood everywhere.
The boy dropped and didn’t get back up.
A man flew through the air, and Scott ducked, looking around. Everywhere, people were killing other people. From what he could tell, every Upgrade had a completely new, never-before-seen ability, and they were killing a lot of Icranu.
Scott looked at Nick. Nick had killed a girl, and now, with the help of another Icranu with the metallic curse, he was finishing off the boy who looked like he was made of rubber.
—Scott! Claire yelled to him in his mind. Help us!
He was about to teleport to Claire when Thaught yelled to him from the Gateway.
“No! Scott, get back here! We have our own job! Claire and Billy can take care of themselves. We cannot allow these Upgrades to get through the portal!”