by R S Penney
Desa leaped from the rooftop, freeing herself from the earth’s pull, and sailed over the tiny backyard to a building on the next street over. From there, she jumped across the road to a three-story home on the city’s perimeter.
Rojan was waiting for her there, down on one knee near the ledge and holding one of those crescent-pistols in his hand. He shot a glance in her direction and nodded with approval. “It’s time.”
“You’re sure?”
Kalia grumbled when she landed on the roof, dusting herself off. She glared at Desa as if to say that this was all her fault. “What’s happening?”
“They’re coming,” Rojan answered.
Cautiously, Desa approached the ledge and stared out on the vast expanse of clay on the north side of the city. At first, she saw nothing – just cracked earth and blue sky – but the Field Binders who had taken position on neighbouring rooftops were readying themselves for battle.
Desa strained and strained until she noticed the thing that had caused all of this commotion. A crimson patch in the distance, growing larger and larger as it drew near. Hanak Tuvar was coming.
Maybe it was just her imagination, but she could swear she saw people marching out of that haze, gray bodies like the ones that she had fought in Ofalla. Was the demon getting desperate? Surely, it wouldn’t resort to the same tired tactics a third time.
Crouching next to Rojan, Desa let out a grunt of disapproval. She narrowed her eyes as she watched the approaching horde. “If that’s all they’ve got, this’ll be over in time for dinner.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Rojan muttered.
A few minutes later, the enormous squid came into view, standing over four stories tall and pounding the ground with its tentacles as it crept toward the city. Its gaping maw produced a howl that reverberated off the land.
The redness was spreading.
Desa saw tendrils of it stretching to her left and her right, forming a ring around the ancient city. “They’re surrounding us,” she whispered. “That’s the plan.”
“One way or another,” Rojan said. “It ends here.”
Desa was about to reassure him, to insist that they would emerge victorious – after all, they had faced these creatures several times now – but then she noticed the corpses ambling out of that crimson haze. Those weren’t villagers. Those were soldiers in gray uniforms, carrying gray rifles.
Men wheeled small cannons into position. She counted at least a dozen of them and several wagons full of ammunition pulled by gray horses. Now, she knew what Hanak Tuvar had been doing in the days since their last encounter.
It had been gathering an army.
“Get to the pyramid,” Rojan growled. “Tell Nari it’s time. We’ll hold out here as long as we can.”
28
Miri soared up to the rooftop with a rifle in hand, then double-tapped her belt buckle to let gravity reassert itself. Her aim was slightly off. She had been intending to land near the ledge but had overshot by a few feet. Her legs gave out when she touched down, and she landed on her knees.
Rising slowly, she dusted herself off and grunted at the pain. Sweet Mercy, how did any Field Binder perform such stunts without breaking every bone in their body? Desa made it look so easy.
Rojan stood on the far side of the roof with his feet apart and his back turned, staring out at the enemies that advanced on them. Even from here, Miri could see the crimson ring that surrounded the city. “Still not used to that, huh?”
A grimace contorted Miri’s face, and she shook her head in dismay. “Not planning on getting used to it,” she said, striding over to join him. “Once this is over, I plan to go back to my simple, Ether-free life.”
He offered a small smile. “If you insist,” he murmured. “I’m sure you can see that Field Binding has its advantages.”
He gestured to the expanse of clay outside the city, and Miri gasped when she saw what was coming their way. An army. A bloody army! If she had to guess, she would say there were at least five hundred gray soldiers out there, all marching in orderly ranks. She noted the teams of men wheeling small cannons into place. They moved with precision, as if some vestige of who they had been remained. The soul was gone, but the skills imprinted on the brain through years of training lingered. Or maybe she was just imagining it. Maybe Hanak Tuvar was capable of directing an entire army on its own.
She saw the demon looming in the distance. It had grown since their last encounter. Now, it would dwarf most buildings in Ofalla and many in Aladar as well. Those slimy, writhing tentacles propelled the beast forward.
Sweat broke out on Miri’s forehead, a thick bead rolling down the bridge of her nose. “Should we attack?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Rojan said. “They’re not in range.”
The front rank of soldiers continued their relentless advance, hoisting up rifles and pointing them at the people on the rooftops. “Steady now!” Rojan called out, his voice amplified by a Sonic-Source. “Nobody panic!”
“Whatever you’re gonna do, Desa,” Miri whispered. “Make it quick.”
Rojan stood tall with his head held high, his face a mask of resolve. “Now!” he called out. “Trigger the outer defenses!”
Out in the field, gray soldiers dropped to their knees, trapped by some unseen force. Lightning flashed over their colourless bodies, scorching flesh and setting clothes on fire. Miri did a quick count and discovered that at least fifty of those creatures had been incapacitated. Maybe more.
She felt the slight tug of the Gravity-Sources that Rojan’s Field Binders had Infused into rocks and chunks of clay, but at half a mile away, it was more of a nuisance than anything else, overpowered by the earth’s natural pull. Still, she backed away from the ledge. She really hated heights.
“Get down!” Rojan shouted.
Miri didn’t need to ask why.
She threw herself down on her belly, hissing as bullets zipped through the air above her. With a string of muttered curses, she crawled back to the ledge. Some of those distant soldiers were struggling to rise, struggling to lift their weapons. But they still managed to fire another volley.
She scanned the enemy forces and noticed teams of men inclining the cannons for a long-range shot. They loaded balls the size of watermelons and then lit the fuses. “Rojan, we have a problem!”
“Force-Sinks!” he bellowed.
The first cannon erupted with an orange flash – strange that the fire should still have colour – and spat a ball that flew over the heads of all those marching soldiers. It descended toward a nearby building, then stopped dead in midair, stilled by three Field Binders who stood on the roof with hands raised in a warding gesture.
Another cannon went off, this one firing at a lower trajectory. The ball sped toward one of the neighbouring buildings and crashed through its back wall, narrowly evading the Force-Sinks, which were limited by directional modifiers.
The three Field Binders atop that building leaped, Gravity-Sinks carrying them into the sky. They drew crescent-shaped pistols and scorched the enemy soldiers with streaks of lighting.
The roar of cannon fire filled Miri’s ears.
“Cover me!” she shouted to Rojan.
Getting up on one knee, Miri lifted her rifle and looked through the sight. She settled the crosshairs onto a trio of men, two of whom were adjusting the cannon while the third picked up what must have been a twelve-pound ball. She chose the latter as her target and put him down with a single shot. “Hurry up, Desa!” she whispered. “Please!”
Killing her Gravity-Sink, Desa alighted on the pyramid’s roof, the enormous crystal towering over her and glittering in the sunlight. She found Nari waiting for her with a look of impatience. “They’re here,” Desa croaked.
“Obviously,” the former goddess replied. “Quickly, there isn’t much time. Just like we practiced.”
They each pressed a palm against the crystal. It was warm to the touch. Clearing her mind of everything – fear, anger, anticipation – D
esa made herself one with the Ether. The world transformed, the pyramid becoming a collection of tightly-knit particles in a roiling sea of billowing particles. Strangely, she could still make out the contours of each individual object. Nari began to glow with pure radiance, a comforting light that blazed like a beacon. Hanak Tuvar knew what they were planning, and it had come anyway.
Desa made herself one with the crystal as well, feeling its sturdiness, its stability. This shimmering mass of calcified Ether had been sitting right here for over a hundred centuries, weathering dust storms, scouring winds and the sun’s relentless glare. It gave her comfort.
Together with Nari, she manipulated the Ether, softening it, making it malleable, bending it into a shell around Hanak Tuvar. The demon screamed, resisting their attempts to Bind it. It thrashed, tentacles flailing, and lashed out with its dark power. The prison shattered before it even formed.
Desa felt crushing despair. How could she defeat a creature like this? What had she been thinking? The melancholy passed, replaced by a renewed resolve, and for an instant, she locked eyes with Nari.
Gathering their will, they began again.
Miri fell upon her belly, bullets whistling through the air. They had seen her. They knew she was targeting their cannons, preventing them from using the heavy artillery. Or trying to, anyway. A thought occurred to her in the midst of all that chaos.
Wasn’t metal supposed to melt in that strange distortion field? Desa had said that Hanak Tuvar could prevent it – that it had used street lamps as projectiles – but Miri had assumed it had taken conscious effort to do so. They had never anticipated a fight like this. Surely, the demon wouldn’t be able to preserve an army’s worth of guns and ammo. Well, they had been wrong.
When she ventured another glance, she saw that the enemy soldiers were trying to stay ahead of the crimson wave. Teams of men wheeled those cannons forward while the others marched toward the city. That seemed to confirm her suspicion. Hanak Tuvar had to concentrate to preserve any piece of metal within its distortion field. Maybe that would slow it down.
Rojan was lying prone and gasping, frantically scanning the battlefield. “Second wave of defenses!” His voice boomed in Miri’s ears, the Sonic-Source carrying his words to everyone within a mile.
She risked another peek and found the gray soldiers falling, their uniforms igniting as smoke rose from their scorched flesh. Once again, the flames had a natural, orange hue even though they consumed the bodies of men who had been stripped of colour.
One of the wagons got within range of a Heat-Source, and the sacks of gunpowder it carried exploded with a devastating roar, creating a plume of fire that climbed into the air. The blast sent chunks of wood flying.
All that heat! Maybe Miri was imagining it, but she was pretty sure the ambient temperature had gone up a few degrees.
A bullet grazed the ledge of the rooftop, whizzing past her left ear. She scooted backward to deny her enemies a tempting target. Damn it! She was useless up here! But going down there was suicide.
The building rattled when something pounded it. Most likely a cannonball. A few more shots like that, and the roof would collapse. There had to be something she could do! Something that wouldn’t get her killed in less than ten seconds.
Rojan retreated from the ledge, raising a hand to shield himself. Bullets jerked to a halt in front of him, drained of kinetic energy. They fell to land at his feet as he backed up to crouch beside Miri. “We have a new problem.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You don’t say!”
With a great deal of reluctance, she rose just enough to see over the lip of the roof. That crimson haze had completely surrounded the city, standing two hundred feet tall and slowly closing in on them. A definite problem, but she wouldn’t call it a new one. She was about to say as much when she realized that Rojan was talking about something else entirely.
A gray man in a drab uniform floated up to hover over the advancing army, hanging in the air about fifty feet away from the building. Lightning crackled between his fingers. “Die!” he screamed, thrusting his hands out and hurling two jagged bolts of electricity that struck the small house and sent pieces of debris flying.
Discarding her rifle, Miri forced herself to stand.
The flying soldier cackled.
Ignoring good sense, Miri began a furious sprint toward him, double-tapping her belt when she neared the hole in the roof. She leaped and shot toward him like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Coming out of his gleeful reverie, the man noticed her at the last second. His black eyes widened.
Miri slammed into him, and they tumbled through the air, vertigo setting in as she lost the ability to distinguish up from down. It was all she could just to hang on. The man snarled at her.
She pulled a throwing knife from her belt.
He raised a crackling hand.
Miri was faster, jamming the blade into his throat. But not before he landed a kick to the belly that sent her careening to the ground. The Gravity-Sink prevented her from accelerating, but she was already falling at a terrifying speed. Maybe this wasn’t such a-
She hit hard, shattering bones on impact, and then bounced off the clay. The next thing she knew, she was racing back into the sky. What? That wasn’t supposed to happen! The Gravity-Sink, she realized too late.
She double-tapped her belt without thinking and dropped like a stone. Her bones snapped. She was fairly certain that she had broken every one on the left side of her body. And…Her legs. Her legs wouldn’t move. A spinal wound? The panic started to well up inside her. One stupid move, and she was paralyzed for the rest of her life? No! Not her! She would rather go out fighting! She would-
The grays were crowding around her, slowly moving in.
It seemed she was about to get her wish. This couldn’t get any worse. But what was that she saw? A figure in red streaking through the sky? Miri sighed and whimpered as a flash of pain went through her body.
She had spoken too soon.
Azra landed in the narrow gap between two gray buildings, killing her Gravity-Sink when her booted feet touched the ground. She drew herself up to full height – a woman in a red hood with the hilt of a sword poking over her right shoulder – and flowed out of the alley. One last task and then her work was complete.
She stepped onto a curving street lined with small, stone houses on both sides, very much aware of the sounds all around her. Every scuff of shoes on the pavement, every whisper of wind, every growl of gunfire. The changes that Adele had forced upon her had sharpened her ears among other things.
That was why it was no surprise to her when gray-clad Field Binders emerged from neighbouring alleys. One to her left and one to her right. So predictable. They both had those strange Al a Nari pistols.
She spun on the one to her left.
Thrusting out her open hand, she loosed a surge of kinetic energy that hit the poor man square in the chest. He went flying backward down the street, legs kicking, and then fell to the ground.
She rounded on the other man, a tall fellow with golden hair and tanned, olive skin. That one cried out in alarm.
Azra leaped with a pulse of her Gravity-Sink, drawing her sword as she passed over his head. It was an elegant weapon, slightly-curved with a single-edged blade. Twirling it, she turned around to face him.
The man pointed his gun at her.
Azra lifted the sword up in front of herself, the Electric-Sink in its blade dissipating the lightning that he sent her way. With her free hand, she retrieved a little rock dust from her pocket and threw it at him.
She triggered the Light-Sources that she had Infused into every grain, a series of tiny fireworks flashing before his eyes. Blinded by the glare, the man stumbled backward and looked away.
She jumped, kicking him in the chest.
The sudden, ferocious blow knocked the wind out of him, cracking one of his ribs. He wheezed, hunching over and pawing at his body.
Azra spun, her blade whistling
through the air in a swift, horizontal arc, slicing right through his neck. His severed head dropped to the ground, the body following a second later.
The second man was half a block away, standing with the lightning gun clutched in one hand, pointing it at her. Such delicious horror in his eyes. The poor fool didn’t dare fire when his friend stood in the way – that had been part of Azra’s plan – and now, it was too late.
Sauntering toward him with the tip of her blade leaving a furrow in the dirt, Azra smiled within the depths of her hood. “I’m not here for you,” she said. “Step aside, and I will spare your life.”
The man jumped, triggering a Gravity-Sink and climbing to the rooftops. He pulled a handful of coins from his pouch and let them rain down on Azra.
She jumped, back-flipping with a growl. When she landed, instinct took over, and she retreated further. Circles of frost expanded from the coins, spreading and intersecting with each other, leaving a thin sheet of ice on the road. And it was cold! Even with the harsh sun beating down, it felt like a morning in late autumn.
The Field Binder aimed his strange pistol.
Azra leaped to the side seconds before lightning struck the ground where she had been standing. She maneuvered into an alley, taking refuge in the shadows. The element of surprise had given her an edge over that first man. Now, she’d have to be careful.
Triggering her Gravity-Sink, she jumped and rose gracefully to the rooftops, landing on the nearest building. Her enemy was floating above the road, watching her with wary eyes. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
The man cocked his head, studying Azra for a long moment. “You’re trying to kill Desa before she can return Hanak Tuvar to its prison,” he said. “Why? What do you get out of the deal?”
“Amusement.”
“Don’t you understand? That demon will destroy the world.”
“Yes,” Azra agreed. “Should be quite a show.”