-----Devyn Soyokaze smiled as he pushed a few deminite corpses away with his feet and approached the edge of the cliff. Drekis was below him, returning his gaze with an eager pulse. The dark body of the chaos lord stretched out like a shadow against the rising sun, and as its mass grew a transparent haze of black fog spiraled around him.
-----Drekis was now twice the size of Kaas, who had turned his back on his previous opponent to look up at the Fallen council member with a timid but still visible snarl. Once the shadow of Drekis had passed over Kaas, the chaos avatar’s body ceased its ascent. Wisps of black ooze leaked out from beneath him and then stretched up into a dozen tentacles.
-----Dorchadas Laan sliced through the air as Kaas waved his weapon in Devyn’s direction. “What is the meaning of this? We had an agreement; he is my prey!”
-----“We said we’d allow you to fight him first; we did not say you could have all night to do so. Our isle will breach the borders of Khazan City before the hour is through; it is time we conclude this.” Devyn focused his attention on Drekis, though he could easily imagine the look on Kaas’ face as he tossed his efforts aside. With little effort, Devyn leapt off of the small cliff and landed behind Kaas. Not a sound was made. Two of most imposing figures in the Fallen order were back to back. Kaas’ fist tightened around his sword.
-----“Are you going to strike me down?” Devyn asked. His hands were kept casually to his side as if they were hanging in his pockets.
-----“You’re inviting me to try, is that it?”
-----“I understand that your allegiance to the Fallen is out of convenience, but I’ve never understood you to be a spoiled child.”
-----Kaas grunted. “I don’t remember you voicing any interest in this battle.”
-----“We don’t always put what we want into words now do we?”
-----“Fine.” Kaas sheathed Dorchadas Laan and began to walk away. “Do as you wish.”
-----Devyn watched Kaas’ reluctant exit out of the corner of his eye and then took a few steps towards Drekis. A number of the writhing tendrils veered toward him as he approached, but then both of them halted; the tentacles hovered halfway between them.
-----“So, a member of the council decides to show his face to me. I’m very pleased with this Soyokaze; in the beginning I had fears that you and your council would hide away in that glorified spire.”
-----A quick glance at the battlefields that surrounded them allowed Devyn to see that the war was still a violent stand still, although it seemed that the Fallen’s line of defense was holding mainly because of the Eversor and the more powerful members of the Fallen order. “You’ve done better than I anticipated. Only one barrier left before you reach the tower. You even did well against Kaas; but now you will have to get through me.”
-----Although Kaas had left the battle, he still remained around the base of the cliff that Devyn had been standing on; from there he watched and listened to their confrontation. If his sword had failed to kill Drekis, could Devyn’s power do any better? Devyn was not an avatar, but it was incorrect to assume that the avatars were the strongest beings in existence. Besides that, there was the fact that Devyn’s intimate relationship with the Fallen gave him an connection to the power of the void, and it was quite possible that the only person to ever put the voids power to a more devilish use was Quietus himself.
-----By now the tentacles of Drekis were springing out of his back, from under the shape of his wavering body, and even growing up from under the bedrock. “I’m not sure how much of a challenge you’ll be, but no matter how powerful you are, you’ll never be able to kill me.”
-----“So I’ve heard. However, I’ll test that for myself. Many before you have claimed immortality—and now…they are all dead.” His voice trailed off as one of Drekis’ black tentacles slithered out along the ground and quickly circled around his feet. Just as they closed in he jumped, hands still calmly at his side, and avoided the noose.
-----A second tentacle lashed out, this time coming from above and diving towards Devyn. It’s edge had become sharp and rigid, a weapon that would pierce the armor of tanks and warships. Devyn merely closed his eyes and waited. The tentacle was quick, but Devyn lived out every tenth of a second to the fullest, thinking, strategizing. His mind reached out beyond the physical, into the infinite pool of knowledge about combat, war, cacophony; and as the worm-like weapon descended, he worked his way through volumes of information and deciphered it instantly. This was the art of the dance, the one true dance that all others were a mockery of; a complete and unchallengeable understanding of the methods and materials of fighting, from the most insignificant of street brawls to the most historical of wars.
-----Kaas perceived an unmistakable mastery of grace in Devyn’s inevitable evasion. With the slightest of the steps, wasting no more energy than necessary, he stepped to the side, and with casual ease avoided each wave and strike of the tentacle. The weapon tried to follow his movements, weaved from side to side in at attempt to lead Devyn into a state of weakness, but it was he who led the tentacle. It was not merely as if Devyn was avoiding the blows in one particular way; it was as if his movements were right—the natural and only correct steps.
-----At last the tentacle veered and pulled back into the air. It dived down from above, and once again it missed its mark, slamming down into the ground while Devyn slid out of harms way. The tentacle’s impact ruptured the rock and split it in all directions, forging an expanding crater of unstable cracks and sharp crags. It was then that something happened which Devyn did not see or intend. The rigid end of the tentacle became like water, a deep blue liquid which rushed out to fill the crater. An instant pool was formed, and from out of this dim puddle came a hundred smaller tentacles that shot straight out like spears from a ballista.
-----“This is…” Devyn reared his head back as a number of the spears flew past his chest; a single blade cut into his cheek, but by the time that blood was drawn he had leaped away from the path of the other tendrils. An unseen force then pulled the tentacles back into the pool, and the water then seeped up into the main appendage just before it retreated back to its master.
-----“I’m not content to watch you dance around my attacks. Show me your power, not your footwork.” Drekis hissed.
-----Devyn wiped the blood off of his cheek with one finger and grinned. “Chaos is an unpredictable thing. Even the one dance that sees into the secrets of every battle that was and every battle that will ever be does not see all of your movements. And that is because you foolishly choose to deconstruct all rules, as if you try to separate yourself from reality.”
-----“Why would I adhere to such blasphemy? You impose order and understanding on chaos—dare to portend what the future holds. You people almost make me as sick as Fate.”
-----“The fact that you do not follow the dance shows that you are lost.”
-----“Your belief and blind devotion to it only shows how naïve you are.” Two more tentacles whipped out at Devyn, but this time Soyokaze not only side-stepped the attack, he reached out with a clenched fist and passed his hand through both weapons. A surge of invisible force assailed the tentacles. By the time Soyokaze’s fist had gone through them, they had been largely dissolved. The remainders of each tentacle whimpered away and fell back into Drekis’ form.
-----“That is the power of the void.” Drekis laughed. “So, even with him gone, there are still some who carry on his legacy.”
-----“You should consider yourself fortunate that Quietus isn’t here. Your attack would have never even reached the island.”
-----“The people of Khazan are fortunate that that is not the case. A battle between us would have torn the nexus apart if it was allowed to carry on to its conclusion. And you, Devyn…you’re nothing more than pale shadow of him. Do you really think that a non-avatar like you has a chance of taking me down? If that is so, then show me the limits of your power, because I am tired of holding back!” Radiating strands of red and green clashed across his fist. The energy was wild—untamed and leaping, spiraling around the Fallen Island. Like the center of a sun his fist glowed, cast its light out so that no one could ignore it. Flames picked up out of no where, engulfing the ground beneath Soyokaze’s feet. They too seemed to wash and wave in odd patterns, as if the spinning bolts of Drekis’ hand were conducting them.
-----“Very well,” Devyn replied, eyes darkening with a malicious and stern visage. Sharp air currents circled around Soyokaze and quickly expanded; soon the island was covered in a soft but endless breeze, the gentle but ominous touch of an autumn wind. Currents swept over the flames, instantly putting them out and making the bedrock frigid.
-----Drekis seemed to anticipate this, for even as his flames disappeared he licked his upper jaw with an immaculate grey tongue and then threw his arm out. Dazzling lights and prismatic colors converged into a tight beam that burned its away towards Soyokaze, leaving deep trenches through the ground in its wake.
-----Kaas was expecting Devyn to dodge, to avoid the attack as easily as he had done with the previous assaults, but he was surprised to find Soyokaze standing coolly, his arms forming the most basic of hand to hand guards. He waited until the beam was close by, once again acting in between the seconds, thinking through every move and every consequence of those moves.
-----The isle trembled with the collision. Devyn’s right fist intercepted the blast; a punch was actually contesting with a beam of energy. Yet of course it was no ordinary fist—nothing about Devyn Soyokaze was ordinary in the slightest. Even within the confines of those hands, those fingers, dangerous though they may be in their own right, flowed the power of the void. A mixture of crushing gravitation force and the natural decay and deterioration of all material things clashed with chaos magic, which by its very nature seeks to undo the order of material objects; and so a stalemate was born, Devyn flying back unharmed, and Drekis pulling back as his beam died down. A deep crack, large enough for Devyn to fall into, had formed between them, just under the spot where their powers had wrestled, and it seemed to stretch the entire length of the floating isle.
-----“They would continue this insanity here?” Kaas spat out. The cliff that he had been standing under had mostly collapsed, but he wasted no time in slashed his way out of the rubble, not wanting to miss a single moment. “Something like that happens again, and the island could be torn in half.”
-----This was not lost on Devyn, who despite coming out of the match unscathed was looking with disdain at the fissure before him. The unleashing of the chaos magic—perhaps aided by the explosive match against the void—had disturbed the magical forces which had long held the Fallen Island in the air. Even now Devyn could feel a slow descent. There were still miles left before Khazan City would be anything more than a spectacle in the distance.
-----“So you survived that,” Drekis said with a hint of wonder. “I find that strangely encouraging.”
-----Soyokaze laughed softly as he skipped over the divide. Drekis slithered forward to meet him, tentacles flailing in every direction.
-----“I wonder just how much of chaos you actually control.” Devyn said. The open challenge to Drekis’ title caught the chaos avatar off guard. “Chaos and the Void, two forces which seem to have very similar goals. Yet Chaos has never been of any use to the void, because their forces are scattered, not united in any fashion that would ever allow them to ready their ambitions.”
-----“I could say the same for you, a follower of a misguided order which seeks some sort of preposterous nothingness. The void can never, and will never achieve its true desire, because the void only looks inwards, sees itself and its nothingness and knows nothing of what really lies beyond. The only real originator of it was Quietus, all others are weak minded fools who cowered under his banner—and even Quietus was just a puppet, chosen by Void and made to believe its tempting lies. Face it Soyokaze, you’re not some grand dark empire that rules the sky, you’re a false religion on a crusade.”
-----Something in those words ignited Soyokaze, made his heart beat three times a second and turned the cool breeze into a cyclone. Suddenly he sprinted towards Drekis; his feet could barely be seen touching the ground. If Drekis would not willingly enter the conventional dance, then he would bring the dance to him.
-----Drekis’ tentacles centered themselves on Devyn’s path and jetted forward to intercept, but Devyn waved his hand and with that the cyclone parted, pulling the tentacles one way or the other. The path was clear. He lunged in the air, coming up high and falling fast onto the dark form. His fist plunged into the flesh, or whatever it was that Drekis was made of. It felt strangely like liquid, but it was tangible, with a strange density about it so that he could feel his downward strike tearing through a resistant material. The power of the void dispersed Drekis’ body, dissolving a large portion of Drekis’ left side. The Chaos Avatar swung his left arm with two of his fingers having grown out into sharp talons; Devyn swung around, letting the arm pass by the side of his head and he cut into the limb with a spinning knife hand.
-----Again the black mass dissolved, shattering against the destructive nature of Devyn’s touch; like water the loose pieces became a spray that littered the air and fell like placid rain. Drekis’ right arm spouted upwards, his fist growing out into a square-shaped hammer. Soyokaze could feel the bloodlust coming down on him. He stepped back to avoid the hammer fall, but the plunge of the weapon caved the ground in, forcing many spires to fly up so that he was forced to leap backwards several times in order to escape the reach of the crater.
-----When Drekis lifted the mass out of the ground he tore out a dozen of the stone spikes, but instead of crashing to the ground they began to levitate around Drekis. Deep laughter boomed towards Devyn. The hammer receded inwards and became a hand once more; the body parts which had been reduced to ash by Soyokaze’s strike reformed.
-----“That won’t work. Not on me.” One finger on his reconstructed hand twirled around and the chunks of rock changed into polished metal. Each projectile’s mass shrunk in to the form of an oblong ball with razor spikes stretching out of every available place. Drekis relaxed his body, let his mind take over the work and cast the projectiles at his enemy one at a time, though in rapid succession.
-----Faking to the left, Devyn quickly darted to the right, avoiding three of the spiked cannonballs while he curved his direction into a collision course with the Chaos Avatar. A few more of the objects flew out, this time in clusters that were arranged to accommodate for his speed and motions. He began to slide out of their way but the firm ground that his feet were dancing upon became dry sand. It was the work of Drekis’ chaos magic, for no where in this vicinity of the Fallen Island had such sand. Only a small body, an island of sand among a sea of bedrock, had been formed, but it was enough that the rules of footing and movement changed, and instead of gripping the floor his feet skidded through the abrupt sand.
-----Although he lost his balance, Soyokaze managed to at least pull his main body out of the way of the metal constructs. Two passed by cleanly, but a third was about to ram its spikes into his forehead, so he was forced to smash the projectile aside. The object was, of course, destroyed in the process, but Devyn had also received a trio of deep cuts running down the length of his right arm.
-----The power of conversion was not to be taken lightly; not only could it cripple an opponent directly, it could also completely undermine any advantages that a person possessed in battle, instead creating new weaknesses for the converter to utilize. Quick, devastating blows were the only way to deal with such enchantments. Blood dripped down his arm, but whatever pain he felt Devyn mulled as natural, and it would have no effect on the performance of that arm. He charged at his enemy, hands spread out, winds blowing furiously. Between all of the remaining projectiles he dived and darted from side to side, waiting patiently for Drekis to run out of his ammunition.
-----And then, when the last of the objects had been cast, Devyn fell on Drekis with all the weight of his body behind his punch. The first hit ripped the surface of the dark matter, but Devyn didn’t stop there. Blow after blow followed, each hitting in a different spot in a different way. Knife hands and back hands intermixed with conventional punches and open-palmed strikes. Even Kaas, who was used to matching the sound-breaking attacks of his nemesis Tanin, could barely keep track of what was going on.
-----How many blows had been landed was unknown, and more than likely irrelevant to either participant. What remained of Drekis was now a few lines of black string that collected into a stump at their base, and a few of these strands rose up like tree vines to bear the weight of that draconic head.
-----“Are you satisfied?” The head asked, casting a vertical grin. Drips of black ooze gushed out from the severed neck and began to separate into tentacles that grabbed and lashed at other parts of his body. “You know this is futile.”
-----Devyn smiled. “And just how many times can you regenerate from a wound like that?” Before Drekis’ torso could completely reform he dived in and struck once with his right, then once more with his left. Half of Drekis’ body fell apart, holed by craters and assailed by sizzling, burning exteriors. He reared back for a third strike, this time aimed at the cackling face that started down at him; but as his punch followed through Drekis’ body wound itself up like a corkscrew and bent out of the way. The center of Drekis’ body was as thin as a rope now, but his head and shoulders were still enough to cover Soyokaze’s body.
-----Drekis’ right arm became a whip-like blade that followed through with the twisting of the Chaos Avatar’s body. Devyn’s neck was the target, but he expectedly dodged and moved in for the kill. It was then that the two of them began to spin around violently, moving behind each other and circling around each other’s attacks. The two became a blur, a flash of two forms rapidly exchanging places.
-----Finally it was Devyn who took the advantage, completing one of his spins before Drekis could completely face him; and so Devyn buried a hard right into Drekis’ chest. There he remained for a few seconds, half surprised that he had made the hit. He pulled the fist out and an explosion went on inside of the formless body. The entire midsection was vaporized—everything above collapsed.
-----“The end.” Devyn whispered. He waited for Drekis’ falling head to reach his eye-level, and then with one punch blew it apart. The rest of the body came lifelessly to the ground, forming a puddle that began to recede and dry. Devyn placed his hands at his side and watched the puddle for several minutes.
-----Kaas crossed his arms over his chest. “So, Soyokaze did it then?” From his vantage point he could only see the side of Soyokaze’s face, but that was enough for him to pick up the skepticism in the dark dancer’s eyes.
-----A voice emerged from the lifeless puddle. “So, I’m not fooling anyone then?” Black ooze thinned out and became more like water, yet it took to the air and changed directions as if it had weight behind it. Soon the body of uncanny material surrounded Devyn, formed a bubble that trapped and choked him within.
-----Thoughts of coming to Devyn’s aid jumped within Kaas’ head for a moment, but they came to amuse him greatly and instead he remained standing among the rubble of the collapsed cliff, watching with his arms crossed, sword remaining patiently inactive at his side.
-----Smaller bubbles formed at the surface of the larger sphere; a sign of conflict and action from within. Various areas of the sphere became distorted for a moment, stretching out in one direction, then turning to another. The wind picked up, and with it came a burst that scattered the material in all directions. Some of the strange matter still clung to Soyokaze, clawed at him and reached up to grab his lefts. It took a few blows before he could wrench himself free, and even then he only escaped by jumping high in the air to avoid the tentacles that rose from the puddle.
-----Drekis wasted no time gathering together all of the pieces that had been blown away and reforming his body to its original state, if that could be called his original state. This time his size was more modest, standing only a head taller than Soyokaze, and equipped with leaner, longer limbs. “You think I’ll run out of energy if I reform many times? Amusing thought. No.”
-----A sheath of dark fog wrapped around Drekis’ form, but the dark dancer was already launching his next attack. Using his feet to propel himself off the ground, Devyn crashed into Drekis like a missile. Not only did his fist cut through that dark, sickening flesh, but his body was still in motion, pushing through the wavering mass. Drekis let out a roar, a kind of raw mixture of anger and pain as Soyokaze burst out of the other side, leaving a large gap in his body and tearing down his left arm.
-----“You seem frustrated Drekis.” Devyn said, landing a few feet behind the monster, his feet and shoulders twisting until he was facing Drekis’ back. “After all, your energy can not be limitless.”
-----“I don’t concern myself with limits and values insipient!” Dark matter shot out of the stump near his shoulder to form an arm once again; the rest of his body followed suit—no trace of the damage Soyokaze had inflicted remained. Drekis half turned, bearing a heated look of disdain, eyes glowing with a feverous exchange of reds, yellows, and deep blues. Then a smile broke across his long face, a showing of crocodilian teeth. “Obviously you’re not as careful as you think you are.”
-----Such a threat made Devyn observe his own body, and on his hands which had just previously torn through the Chaos lord he found that a small part of the dark fog had broken away from Drekis’ body and now hovered around his right arm.
-----As if sensing its discovery, the cloud tightened around the dancer’s wrist, morphed into a thick black ooze and then shot out a tendril which grabbed his other wrist, formed a second, identical bracer of ooze. Before Devyn could react, the tendril pulled from both ends, forcing his hands close together so that the two bracers could join as one mighty shackle. The ooze hardened, became a shell of some substance that Devyn had never seen before, and it was not only hard but dense—so dense in fact that in the next second he was drawn to the ground, his hands like intolerable weights.
-----“That will be enough of your little performance.” Drekis bellowed, a bright light gathering in his neck as he spat the words out. Sparks filled in the areas between his teeth, and when he opened his jaws a luminous ball formed at the back of his throat, growing larger by the second. His jaw-line unhinged like some kind of serpent in order to accommodate the glowing energy ball—perhaps intentionally giving Devyn the time he needed to avoid the attack. However, Devyn could barely scrape his hands across the rock. The rest of his body could move, was still as agile as ever, but his hands were trapped behind the shackles. All of his power, all of the decay that his touch could bring, was focused on these estranged shackles, but the matter was strong, far stronger than steel or titanium. Cracks began to appear across the cuffs; it was breaking down slowly. Almost.
-----Drekis’ uttered some garbled words that were swallowed up by the immense breath beam that followed. He knew that Devyn was close to escaping, had watched the dark dancer hack away at the material he had forged. It was his pleasure to crush any hope he had of getting out in time. The breath ray was at least as wide as Drekis’ himself, and so Devyn could not avoid it with his hands weighed down as such. Instead he raises his shoulders and elbows above his face and braced for the attack.
-----Kaas watched Devyn disappear inside of the emerald-green blast, though he was more interested in tracing the bath of the beam itself, which continued onward and vaporized a small mountain in the distances of the Fallen Island before it hurled into the horizon. He felt jealous, or better yet, offended, that Drekis had not used such power against him in their fight; but then it occurred to him that even now Drekis may not be using all of his power. After all, they had never encountered the Avatar of Chaos before; everything they knew about him was what they were experiencing here and now.
-----The dark avatar instinctively felt the heat and chaotic energy consume Devyn’s body, but he did not sense the ending of a life. Drekis seemed to feel this too as he impatiently waved his hand, casting aside the clouds of smoke that masked the results of his attack.
-----A few pillars of grey dust flew off of Devyn Soyokaze’s body. His skin was slightly darkened, singed—and his sleeves had been burned away. Still, he was whole, marred only by a wash of blood that trickled down from his right eye. “Do not…insult me.” His arms shook, piercing cracks rattled the air as the matter that bound his hands together finally broke. “That kind of theatrics might finish off a lesser Fallen, but those who sit on the council will not die from something so simple.”
-----Drekis laughed, fully pulling his head back and boasting towards the sky. “Come now, did I ever say I was going to kill you. You think far too highly of yourself Devyn. I am not afraid of individuals, and did not come here to rob the Fallen of just one or a few of their strongest. My only goal is the deconstruction of your organization, that you lose what little ground you have on this planet.”
-----Soyokaze disappeared in a blur and was suddenly at Drekis’ side, crouched down, leaning on the tips of his toes. From here he sprang straight up, stared Drekis’ in the face, and prepared to shove a destructive fist straight into his mouth. His hand, and even the power of the void which it carried, collided with an invisible wall. A dazzling spray of colors knocked Devyn away from the chaos lord, and when Devyn looked up he could see that Drekis’ body was surrounded by a thin film of jade-green light. A barrier of chaos energy—and it had succeeded in blocking the inevitable void, the touch of autumn’s wind.
-----The barrier had not been there before, but now its presence was constant, like some natural dome that always shielded him. Drekis seemed to snicker from behind his new defense.
-----“A barrier? That came out of no where,” Devyn shook his hand until the shock that had passed into his arm when he struck the shield died down. “I thought you said earlier that you were tired of holding back.”
-----Small portions of Drekis’ lips curled up, like a dog snarling. “I lied!”
-----Then the whole of the Fallen Isle seemed to come undone, and the battlefield violently separated into a countless pillars of stone, each only wide enough to support a single person. The pillars were spread out, arranged wildly but springing out of every square foot of land, making it so that the entire field was lifting and dividing into sections. Drekis remained on one such pillar, and it rose at his command to become higher than any of the others.
-----Devyn, meanwhile, attempted to jump from one rising pillar to the next, but they quickly began to crumble. At Drekis’ command he was swept into the middle of the rising earth, falling into a deepening crater while the rest of the ground became a gigantic wall at every side. Drekis, now a tiny image rising towards the clouds, snapped his fingers, triggering the walls to convert into sand. This time it was not a small portion of sand, it was the entire wall, at least fifty feet of surrounding bedrock that became a desert. Naturally the sea of sand poured inward to fill the crater, the void at the center where Devyn stood.
-----The impact of the sand struck him simultaneously from all sides, and it was as if a hundred solid blows had racked his ribs and his spine, but that was a minor and temporary annoyance compared to the threat of the accumulating sand itself. He was almost buried, struggling to obtain some kind of hold on the grainy material. Each grab at the surface of the building sand only served to make him sift further into pit, the death trap that Drekis had made for him.
-----There could be no doubt that Drekis was laughing at him now, claiming victory as he watched his trap go to work. Devyn was not about to let this new tyrant have the last laugh; he would could never leave this world behind in such a manner. No, he could never leave this world at all, before he saw to it that the curtain fell for all of the universe. That was the void’s ambition, and Drekis would not take that away from the Fallen. If he could not pull himself out of the sand, then with waves and strikes of his hand he destroyed it, burned it away into pieces of glass which he could crumble. More and more sand rushed in to fill the gaps that he was creating, but he only needed a split second, a single moment where his feet and his shoulders were clear.
-----Once he was free he jumped up, nearly clearing the crater entirely. His feed skidded across the sand that was sliding down diagonally to fill the center, but he maintained his balance and leapt once again, this time catching hold of one of the rock pillars which stretched out of the desert. From here Devyn took several more leaps, higher and higher from one pillar-top to the next. After three jumps he stopped, slowly raising to his fool height, standing sixty feet above the original surface level of the isle. The pillar he stood on continued to rise slowly, and it was joined at all sides by more pillars, although Drekis’ perch, which was just across from Devyn, was still the tallest, at least fifteen feet above the dark dancer. A shining barrier still protected the chaos lord, and its shape had become a more conventional sphere.
-----The Avatar of Darkness had not been lost in this new development. Though Drekis had wrecked and reshaped a large portion of the Fallen island, Kaas had avoided the sand trap and shoved Dorchadas Laan into the side of one of the pillars, using it as a lever to hold himself while it rose up. He felt no need to climb to the tip, for the strength of his arms was tireless. Instead he turned his head back to look at the other parts of the Fallen Island, where he could see that the legions of Drekis were still fighting with the Fallen. The Tower still stood, and much of the island, though wrought with the attrition of war, was unchanged by Drekis’ most recent trickery.
-----Then something that Drekis had said struck him. He pondered, for a moment, the words that had been spat at Devyn. “He does not fear…individuals.”
-----Meanwhile, Drekis stared down at Devyn with a look of amusement, then he lifted his head and gazed at the tower, sensing that what he had longed for was starting to come to pass within that obsidian structure.
-----Waves of air, or some unrecognizable force, slammed into the side of Drekis’ barrier, doing little damage but producing a short cascade of ripples in the surface of the light. Drekis turned, more out of curiosity than out of alarm, to look at the one who had foolishly attacked his barrier.
-----There, standing on another of the pillars which Drekis had erected, stood a second member of the Fallen’s infamous council. A thin but sharpened blade was in his hands. Bands of silver-blue hair fell over the sides of his face.
-----Devyn crossed his arms, having expected the arrival for some time now. “I’ve been waiting for you to show up, Zalrafel.”
---2---
Stolen
-----Marcus Kirk, expert pilot of Dollarcorp weapons development and testing, flew the Eversor back and forth across the length of the Fallen Island. With the power of its engines, the Eversor could soar to the other side of the isle in a single second, instantly allowing Marcus to go where he was needed.
-----In many cases it was Kirk alone who seemed to hold the Fallen line together; the machines were failing, and only the Fallen themselves were holding their own against the seemingly limitless army that Drekis had sent. Kirk had been unprepared for a legion of this size; when he had been informed that an enemy was attacking the Fallen Tower, he had imagined a force that was not even half this size—but then again, for someone to even think of attacking the Tower it would require something of at least this magnitude.
-----Only the sheer power of the Eversor, which far exceeded his expectations in every category, overcame his lack of preparation. With casual ease he directed the ODMBS to fire twelve beam shots in different directions, often behind or to the side of the Eversor. It was with this system and its impressive AI controls that he could take down the bio-fighters which had crowded the air.
-----More of the critters had shown up recently, no doubt using the chaos of battle to sneak in and reinforce whatever casualties that airborne Drekis minions had faced. Ptera-deminites were equally eager to assault him, but their electric blasts were puny compared to the Eversor’s shielding, even when accumulated by swarms. Bio-fighters were a considerable threat, and in their mech form they had worn down the Eversor’s shielding with their energy weapons. Still, the Eversor could run circles around even those devils of the sky, so even with twenty percent shielding left he could dodge all of their attacks, circle behind them, and blast them away with any number of his available weapons.
-----The ODMBS allowed Marcus to overcome the tenacious regeneration of the biological craft; after one salvo of the twelve beams reduced the things to pieces, a second salvo, with each beam directed to a different piece, could turn them to an ash that they could not recover from.
-----Despite the one-sided nature of his sorties, Marcus was aggravated by the fact that only one barrier remained. One man certainly couldn’t be counted on to do all the work. The ground forces would have to fend for themselves now; he was too busy dealing with the bio-fighters.
-----Three more of the devilish creatures flew at him from directly ahead, having long abandoned flanking maneuvers after finding that the ODMBS had rendered those ineffective. A series of laser bombardments passed by the Eversor as Marcus charged, weaving in between the enemy firepower. Most of the lasers were deflected by the magnetic field of the ODMBS. Kirk motioned for the left arm to extend, fingers pointed towards the enemy. With a pull of a trigger the Eversor’s fingers released a spread of gunfire with ripped into the front bio-fighter, destroying several of his spines and putting holes in its armored body. Immediately the fighter broke off and began to transform, the other two split up in different directions.
-----Marcus pulled back and allowed the system to analyze the situation. Green lights flashed across his cockpit; multiple screens traced and tracked the three targets, accounting for their speed and direction. So much information was in front of him, and it would normally be impossible for a human to interpret it all, but that was the brilliance of the Eversor’s system. All of it seemed to wash over him, a thousand bits of information beautifully summarized in one word that his imperfect brain could comprehend at the most basic levels.
-----In truth it was the AI system which was responsible for most of this, but the pilot could not help but feel godly when they absorbed all of that data. All twelve of the ODMBS beam cannons targeted the right fighter, while the left was locked onto by missile launchers. A spray of beams came out, bending and twisting around to a focused spot. At the same time they hit the fighter and melted it to pieces, a pair of atomizer missiles launched from opening compartments in the shoulder.
-----Kirk didn’t have to wait for the impact—the hit was certain. Instead he rushed forward, bearing down on the center bio-fighter that had just finished its transformation. He pressed back on one the left arm control level, signaling for the Eversor to pull out its destroyer blade. Individual beam sabers began to run down the adamantine sword until the metal could no longer be seen, trapped behind an ethereal glow.
-----The bio-mech raised both of its hands as the Eversor flew in. A leakage of its beam weapons escaped from its palms just as the destroyer blade cut in half from the head down. Bright energy washed over the Eversor’s shields, and the cockpit shook from the tremor of the hit.
-----“Annoying bastard.” Marcus spat. He moved the Eversor back several meters and raised the particle beam cannon that was mounted on the side of the left arm. It charged for several seconds, bright yellow spheres that gathered and flickered at the edge of the long, focused cannon. “So long.” The halved creature vanished in the wide beam that followed. Nothing remained.
-----As Marcus had expected, the atomizer missiles had fulfilled their job description…the remaining bio-fighter had been atomized. Red lights were flickering across his control consoles.
-----“Warning, shield power has failed.” A female voice echoed throughout the chamber. Marcus slumped back in his seat and let out a deep breath.
-----“Alright, transfer power from the escape velocity engines.” Kirk ordered. “I doubt I’m in any danger, but I suppose Mr. Dollar would be angry with me if I brought this thing back with scratches.”
-----Another voice chirped in, but it was not the female tone of the computer. The voice was gruff, tinged with a rasp that made it sound like a sick whisper. “My, you do play with some interesting toys. The Nexus is certainly home to some surprising technologies.”
-----“What the hell? Computer…” he found himself looking everywhere in his cockpit, even under the seat, as he searched for the voice. He doubted that the computer could answer his question, for he was certain that it was a different voice, one that was not included in the computer programming. Still, no other options were available. “Computer, where did that last voice come from?”
-----Silence.
-----“Computer, answer me! If you don’t know then just say so.”
-----The AI still did not respond.
-----“I don’t think she can hear you right now.” The hiss made Kirk shake his head rapidly. This time he could tell the direction of the words, they were coming from the central control panel in front of him.
-----“What…is this…?” His voice trailed off and his throat became thick. An impossible image was before him now. What had once been a silver control panel of shining buttons and keyboards was now covered in a thick, flesh-colored slime that oozed out of the cracks between the switches so that it could cover the entire panel in a sickening film. Part of this film sprang up in the form of a bubble, a bubble that expanded to the size of a human head before it popped; and there before Marcus was a heart-freezing scene.
-----Now there was a head in front of him, a dislocated face that smiled at him from the panel surface. “Hello there. I’m Abicion, so pleased to make your acquaintance. Oh please, don’t get up.”
-----“How, what the hell are you freak! Get the hell out, leave, shit!”
-----“Lost for words, oooohh, I have that effect on people sometimes, I’m quite embarrassed.” Abicion said, closing his eyes. “Oh well, time to go to work I suppose.”
-----The cockpit door opened without any prompt. Marcus reached for the controls, tried to direct the Eversor in any way that he could, but nothing responded. Slime began to pour out of every crack and pour in the cockpit, sliding down from every direction. He was walled in, no escape. Strands of the slime grabbed at him, wrapped themselves around his neck and his hands until he could no longer fight against them.
-----“Enjoy the view.” Abicion laughed, flinging the slime appendages out of the cockpit and throwing the hapless pilot out. The man let out a generic scream, though it was weak against the sounds of battle that were going on outside. The poor soul, even in death he was boring.
-----Abicion gathered all of the slime into the chair where Marcus had been sitting. His face, too, leapt off of the control panel and joined the mass that was accumulating there. At last his full body reformed. “Quite comfortable for a weapon of war,” he said as he sat back and felt several of the levers. “So, Master Relinqiest thinks this thing is worth taking? Would appear to be the best mech they’ve offered up so far, guess that makes it a good place to start at least.”
-----He eyed the controls, quickly reading every line of code and command that passed across the six different screens. “Complicated rabble isn’t it. Can’t make heads or tails of this Khazanian stuff.” Little tails of ooze creeped out of the pores of his body and stretched out to touch a different part of the cockpit. In seconds he had more than forty tendrils buried into the control panels, and others running deep into the metal body of Eversor, fusing with circuits and computer chips. The assimilation process would be complete soon.
-----“Ah, I see now. Yes, I understand. Very interesting.” His fingers elongated and wrapped around the two handles at the side of the seat. “Alright, I think I’m ready now.” The Eversor felt like an extension of his body. He knew it inside and out now, was connected to every system, even the most inconsequential of add-ons. He was connected to all of it, and was no longer bound to the necessary of manipulating the original control mechanisms. For all intents and purposes, he was the Eversor.
-----“Now, where shall we begin.” He lifted the left arm of the Eversor and eagerly scouted out the long cannon on the forearm. Abicion grinned and then flicked his tongue out a few times. “As powerful as a warship cannon they say? Let’s see what this thing can do.”
---3---
Breakdown
-----Marc Dollar smoothed a hand over his chin while his eyes shifted over a dozen information screens on his control panel. Each display gave a simple collection of text and numbers, battle information that was updated every ten seconds with data on casualties, tactical maneuvers, and computer recordings of all orders given by the commanders.
-----Normally Dollar disliked sitting on the edge of a battle and monitor it so closely; in fact, he would have preferred observing the Eversor’s test run from an aerial platform, as was his normal routine in circumstances where he wished to be physically present for an event.
-----The vehicle shook back when its main cannon fired; Dollar fell to the side of his seat but caught himself on the arm rests. “Never expected to be participating quite so directly,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, readjusting his suit. “I can barely follow all of this, its getting out of hand! Commander, what is the status of the frontline? Why do we only have one barrier left?”
-----A small picture of the commander from within the vehicle appeared on the center panel. “The enemy numbers are greater than we expected. The machines could not stop their advance as we hoped.”
-----“But the Fallen themselves are fighting; they never should have gotten close enough to attack the barriers.”
-----The commander looked as if he was staring down at reports, reading through several pages of material while biting his lip. “I guess some of the enemy have been rushing past our frontline, ignoring the danger and using their last breath just to get one shot at the shields. The aerial beasts have also dominated the battles above—I’d say they are responsible for the losses to our own frontline.”
-----“Preposterous!” Dollar groaned, pulling his cigar from his mouth and blowing at the screen. “What about the Eversor? It alone should be sufficient enough to solo the airborne creatures—by the Powers it was created to take on entire squadrons of military mechs.”
-----“We haven’t heard anything from the pilot of the Eversor in two minutes.”
-----“What?”
-----“Not even electronic reports. Everything’s been cut off.”
-----“That, is certainly peculiar,” Dollar replied. He pressed his shoulders into his seat and looked up to see the Eversor, his corporation’s most impressive mechanized weapon. For some reason it was still, unmoving—its engines still roared but the flames were small, just enough to keep it hovering in place. Stranger still, the Eversor faced no adversity even though swarms of the bio-fighters now surrounded it.
-----Another voice was heard in the background. One of the pilots of Dollar’s vehicle was shouting new reports to the commander. “Group three has been destroyed, all members killed. Groups five and six have retreated behind the last barrier! Group sixteen is pulling back; Fail and Feklore are the only survivors. Hannah Morris is alone in Group thirty seven, requesting backup immediately!”
-----“How did this happen!?” Dollar sneered at no one in particular and motioned to smash his fist through one of the monitors, but at the last minute he pulled his hand back and calmly rubbed his hand across his head. “Well, none of this would have happened if I had been given accurate information about these people.” He took another whiff of his cigar and exhaled slowly. “Why I hate newcomers. We just might have to use the secret weapon.”
-----The commander overheard, and turned his attention away from the pilots who were still reading out new developments. “You don’t mean…Sir?”
-----“Of course, it was created to defend the tower from miscreants in the first place was it not? What good businessman would build such an impressive piece of engineering and not use it. It would be a crime not to use it. Call the council; we’ll need access to the chamber for access to it.”
-----“Devyn and Zalrafel appear to be engaged in combat.” The commander responded.
-----“How overeager those two are. They never learn.” Dollar was about to search through is memories for another Fallen who had access to the weapon control chamber, but as he stared at the open clouds above him he was startled out of his reflection by a familiar shape flying overhead.
-----Without a doubt, it was the Eversor that he saw hovering above the last barrier, the final defense that wrapped around the Fallen Tower and the Dollarcorp heavy artillery vehicles.
-----“What!? The Eversor, what is that fool Kirk doing. Damn him, damn that man. What does it take to find good cannon fodder these days? Contact him this instant! I want a direct, personal channel!”
-----“He’s still not responding to our hails,” The commander informed. “Everything seems to have been cut off.”
-----The Eversor, which appeared unmarred and unchanged, lifted its left arm to bare the staff-like shaft that was the particle beam cannon. Multiple washes of white light formed at the tip of the square barrel and combined together with a high pitched sound. Such a dreaded sound, a piercing howl that accompanied the approaching destruction, only now that dread fell over the Dollarcorp agents, for the Eversor was bearing its cannon at the Tower.
-----“He’s lost his mind!” The commander shouted, barely getting the words out before a white-hot blast escaped the cannon. Everything in the vicinity was silenced by the collapse of the beam against the barrier. Stinging rays of color rippled through a vibrating wall of particles.
-----“He’ll overheat the goddamn cannon!” Dollar yelled. The particle beam cannon was meant to deliver three second duration beams, but the foolish pilot was still holding it in use, well over ten seconds. The sky flashed and steam shot out from a line of coolant systems down the left side of the gun.
-----As if perfectly aware of how much power the barrier had, the beam cut out just as the shield, the last defense, fizzled out and died. For a moment the Eversor was still, allowing the gun to shoot out its overheated vapors.
-----“I’ll not waste my time with answers. He’s taken down the last shield, the enemy has a clear path to the tower now!” Dollar said. “The enemy has possession of our Eversor somehow, we have to assume the worst; activate the self destruct now.”
-----“I’m afraid I cannot sir. I said the connections were down, and I meant everything. We’re not receiving anything and it’s not accepting any of our offsite commands. It’s like it’s a different machine now.”
-----“The Eversor…” Dollar muttered. “Now I’m angry.”
---4---
Rescue Operation
-----The sun was beginning to dip behind the Champion Mountains in the distance, provoking Kurt to once again draw a line through the dirt with his rusted combat knife.
-----“That’s another hour down, and still nothing.” Kurt muttered.
-----“Stop worrying about them,” Lieutenant Foster replied sternly. “They’re far more capable than we are; all we have to do is wait.”
-----“That’s not the point,” he said, pointing to the falling light. “When that sun goes down they’ll have been gone two revolutions and you know it.”
-----All of the 478th pilots sat huddled around a modest campfire, sitting in a semi-circle formed of freshly cut logs that made for make-shift couches. Each of their respective mechs was offline in a kneeling position, forming a circle of their own around their pilots. They were sixty miles north of the Great Lakes of Karia, though still many miles away from the Champion Mountains where their mission had ended.
-----Captain Kitazawa shifted closer and rubbed his hands before the fire. “The Endless Caves are quite deep. It may have taken them the first day just to find what they’re looking for. Be patient.”
-----“I don’t think the rookie has much of that virtue,” Foster cracked. She bent over, elbows on her knees, face planted squarely between her palms, and looked into the flames.
-----“Rookie…I already made Corporal; am I always going to be the rookie around here?”
-----“You don’t have to be so mean Sara,” Lieutenant Cecelia Angelhart said, “Kurt’s just a little sentimental, that’s all.”
-----“A sentimental soldier…that’s funny.” Paul blurted out.
-----“Not a word out of you Sergeant,” Cecelia retorted, “you’re the one who’s done more complaining than anyone else around here.”
-----“So I don’t exactly relish cold drafts and an assortment of mosquito bites,” Graham said, leaning back with his arms behind his head as if there was some kind of back support for the log. “We could always sit inside the mech’s ya know, they’ve got heaters and plenty of energy to spare.”
-----“How often do we get to do stuff like this though?” Atatsuya asked. “If you ask me, it’s damn relaxing. Old-fashioned is sometimes the best.”
-----“Sentimental…” Kurt repeated. “Couldn’t have picked a better word maybe.”
-----“Sorry,” Cecelia bumped her head a few times jokingly, “Haven’t exactly been on the top of my game, if you know what I mean.”
-----“I admit to liking military quarters more than sleeping out in the wild without the proper equipment.” Ratilda added, pulling her legs up close to her chest.
-----“Queen Relissan’s plan probably didn’t account for this much time,” Takuma folded his arms. “I just hope they haven’t encountered any setbacks.”
-----“See, even the commander is a little worried.” Kurt said.
-----Without saying a word, Sara slowly stood and broke away from the camp, her arms tightly hugging her waste. The others silently watched her walk behind circle of mechs and out of sight.
-----“She’s been acting pretty weird hasn’t she?” Ratilda observed. “Guess Dezzman’s death has affected her pretty badly. I never knew them to be that close though.”
-----“I’ve tried talking to her, but she swears it has nothing to do with Dezzman. I made it clear that that’s my burden…and yet still I don’t know; but even as her commanding officer it isn’t exactly my job to pry.”
-----“Like one stubborn person is going to cure another,” Katie smiled and tried to whisper the comment to Cecelia.
-----“What was that?” Takuma exclaimed.
-----“Nothing.”
-----“Lieutenant…” Kurt trailed off as he jumped up from his log and followed after Sara.
-----“You think that’s wise?” Katie yelled after him. Arlington didn’t respond. “How many stubborn people do we have in this squad,” she muttered after he disappeared.
-----Cecelia shrugged. “I’ve tried to warn the rookie a thousand million times, but what can you say?”
-----“Nah, the kid’s just a go-getter. Never wastes a moment to be alone with a beautiful lady; takes after me I you know,” Graham laughed. “Speaking of which, there’s plenty of room for two in the Senki.” He leaned over to nod in Cecelia’s direction.
-----“In your dreams.”
-----“Every night.”
-----“That’s enough,” Takuma said. “You’re off duty, but don’t get too carried away. Try to at least keep yourself in the mind-frame where you may be called in at any minute.”
-----Arlington traced his fingers along the edges of the DragonFlare’s foot, meticulously searching the area for Sara, who usually retreated somewhere near her mech when she wanted to be alone. Alone…it was true that some people needed to be alone to figure out their problems—Kurt lacked the naiveté necessary for him to think that he, by himself, could help Lieutenant Foster confront whatever inner demons she was dealing with. He was young, but not stupid. Still, she should at least know…
-----And there he found her; not too close to the mechs as he had assumed, but somewhat farther away, standing in the dark, cool shadow that the DragonFlare was casting across the valley. She was standing still, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, facing away from the sunset. Arlington didn’t know what she was looking at, and it probably wasn’t important since she was the kind that could look at nothing; literally look at nothing, just be swept away in internal thought. A haunting sort of charm that she had.
-----All he could see at that moment, when he came within a few feet, almost arms reach of her, was the back of her aqua-green hair, separated into frigid locks and strands that all waved in one direction. Somehow, it made him feel at ease.
-----“Lieutenant…” he began softly. “Listen…”
-----“We’re off duty right now…might as well call me Sara.”
-----“Right, Sara. You know we leave you alone when we do this out of respect, of sorts. But that doesn’t mean…”
-----“I know. At times like this, I just need—you know, a little time to myself, from day to day.”
-----“That’s fine. I just…”
-----“Thank you, for the concern, but I’ll be fine. Concentrate on your own duties.”
-----“I have faith in you Sara, we all do. Look, you were the covering fire for Dezzman…”
-----“I know. I’ll work through it on my own. This is for the Captain’s sake as well as my own, right?”
-----“Yeah. I guess. Just wanted you to know, even if you feel like you need time to yourself, you don’t have to…”
-----“Right.”
-----Arlington laughed and stuffed his chilled hands into his jacket pockets. “I must sound pretty stupid to you, right? ‘Course you know all this already; probably why the others don’t bother saying it. Sucker for stating the obvious, that’s what I’ll always…”
-----There was a short pause. Sara turned her head slightly, “Always…?”
-----A glint in the sky caught Kurt’s attention, throwing off his thoughts and forcing him to run back to the campsite. Sara immediately understood the reaction, eyed the sky, and moved to regroup with the others.
-----“There’s a mech coming in on our location!” Arlington shouted as he approached. Everyone was on their feet and pulling equipment out of storage bags by the time he reached the fire.
-----“Can’t believe sensors got whacked!” Graham groaned. “If you saw it with your own eyes then it can’t be cloaked.”
-----“Some form of radar or sensor jam?” Ratilda suggested.
-----“Not very many machines with jammers good enough to avoid our stuff,” Katie answered. “Won’t be from our military, they’d have sent a signal long ago.”
-----“Was it biological?” Kitazawa asked.
-----Sara, who had joined the group, shook her head. “No, clearly man made, but nothing the Khazan military has produced. Vaguely similar to KOMBG material, but different somehow.”
-----“Sounds like it’s not an enemy then,” the Captain said, catching a glimpse of the approaching machine. “Pilot there’s a fool to not give us some sort of indication, or a message or something. We have to play it safe: Arlington! Graham! Get in you mechs and prepare for stand by startup.”
-----“Just the two then!?” Graham, already near the loading platform of the Senki, pressed the lift controls so that he could be brought up to the opening cockpit.
-----“Two should be enough for an emergency action against one target.”
-----The new mech took its time, sweeping over the sunless parts of the valley while varying its altitude, sometimes dipping down low enough to skim the tips of the trees and other times slashing skyward.
-----“Looks to me like he’s showing off.” Cecelia said. “And I know the make of it now. Marauder unit, Raider EX…mark two probably.”
-----By the time the Raider EX decided to converge on their location, the Senki and the Stormbringer were armed and positioned in front of the unmanned mecha. Those who were not in their machines stood next to the towering feet of the Senki and observed the newcomer land briskly on the ground in front of them.
-----“Yeah, this guy’s full of himself.” Cecelia twirled a ribbon of hair around a finger.
-----As Angelhart had surmised, the mech was of Marauder origin, and was now clearly visible as a Raider EX Mk II, one of the most recent designs used by Marauder raiding parties in the Spellfire desert. This was a machine that was rather peculiar, for it was twice reverse engineered: first from a KOMBG military combat model, and again from a copy of the KOMBG model which had been developed by the LOTMU. A copy of a copy; and yet they had made the Marauders quite infamous in the desert, as well as other regions of Khazan. Mecha-nized divisions of the military had squared off with these things in the past, and they had proven capable of holding out against heavily armed military war-craft.
-----The Raider was as tall as the Senki but much thinner, with a skeletal design at its waste which expanded into a slightly thicker armored chest. Spherical shoulders transitioned into long, flexible arms while the lower body was characterized by comparatively thick legs with a triangular base. Four long instruments, appearing like helicopter blades, sprung out of the back of the craft and laid down like the still wings of a dragonfly.
-----Steam shot out of the shock-trooper face design when the Raider took a familiar kneeling position. Circular doors in the center of its chest spun in opposite directions, revealing a spherical chamber within that housed a single individual. He laughed like an old friend and waved, mumbling generic greetings that left the 478th pilots perplexed.
-----A casual air surrounded this man, for he jumped without a second thought out of his cockpit seat and landed on the descent platform like he had done it a thousand times. At ground level he pulled out a cigarette and lighter from his shirt breast-pocket and began to smoke for a few seconds before snapping the lighter shut and strolling towards the amassed group of pilots.
-----“That was rather unprofessional, even for a Marauder,” Kitizawa exclaimed.
-----“The legs on that thing survive after a harsh landing like that?” Cecelia added with a raised eyebrow.
-----The man waved. “Oh, that’s nothing for my baby. I’ve spent a fortune tuning her up to become the cream of the crop, if I do say so myself. Not a bad piece of work even compared to the stuff you’re used to. ‘Course the money and the parts were stolen, and usually second rate until I fixed it up myself. Man, the stuff I could do with your guys’ budget.” He whistled to himself three times and shook his head at the sky.
-----“And you are…?” Kitizawa asked.
-----“Right, right.” The man pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and cleared his breath. “Forgive me for that, I tend not to introduce myself until some idle chit chat is out of the way. Name’s Jones, Roy Jones, but just call me Roy. I’m the pilot of that thing over there, which was once part of a legendary pirate group.”
-----“The history lesson can wait. Why are you here?” Kitizawa said.
-----“Well, if you absolutely must jump to the heart of the matter…I was sent from Axia to bring a message to you guys. Don’t know the details that much, but bad stuff is going on, the mission in the caves is a failure, and the Queen is looking at some pretty strange mojo as a method of quick extraction. They’ll need you guys ready to sweep in and pick them up; I’ve got the coordinates.”
-----He rubbed his chin after biting down on his cigarette carelessly. “Oh yeah, and I guess I’m your back-up for this rescue operation.”
---5---
Immortality
-----Hundreds of rock towers of various shapes and sizes sprung up in the valley just outside of the Fallen Tower, turning the once flat land into an impassable collection of minor mountains.
-----Kaas, still clinging to his sword that was embedded in the side of one of these spires, watched from a distance as Devyn faced off against Drekis; but then there was another—Zalrafel, who had made his appearance. Drekis was standing on a platform that was higher than any of the other towers, though both Zalrafel and Devyn could have reached him with one leap.
-----Waves of light still poured down on Drekis’ body, forming a forest colored bubble of translucent glow which had negated Zalrafel’s first strike. However, Zalrafel seemed unmoved by the ineffectiveness of his attack; the fallen angel had sought only to get Drekis’ attention with that move, nothing more.
-----Devyn crossed his arms and looked across the pillars at Zalrafel. “I thought that you would make your move much earlier.”
-----Zalrafel didn’t flinch; he remained focused on Drekis. “We agreed that I would fight him when Kaas was done. Still, when you suddenly leapt into the battle I couldn’t help but stay back and watch it unfold. An enlightening experience…”
-----Soyokaze closed his eyes and seemed to be chuckling to himself, but his expression was cold, a crooked smile bent out of morbid amusement rather than joy. “Of course, if you think you can bring him down even after what you witnessed, then you might as well try.”
-----Drekis sneered from behind the barrier. “Delay me with your individual efforts will you? Do you really think your precious tower will still be standing as long as you keep me occupied?”
-----“Does it matter? You can think whatever you want,” Devyn said. He was standing at ease now, clearly in no mind to launch an attack. “Zalrafel will be your opponent now.”
-----“What is this, some kind of test of my power against your most powerful members?” Drekis boomed, then a wide grin split across his dragon-face. “I see, you’re testing my immortality. Throwing as much as you can against me to see if there is someway to take my life. Even if you did possess a means by which to kill me…the way things are now, I would not die.”
-----“I will be the judge of that,” Zalrafel said as he pulled out his sword, the Elder blade. “If you are truly immortal, then I will discover the source of your immortality.” Using only the strength in his heels, he launched from his current platform, becoming a blur that channeled into the sky and then fell straight upon Drekis’ tower.
-----Before Zalrafel could land, a nearby tower grew out under Drekis’ command and formed into a giant arm of stone. The rock molded and bent like moist clay, weaving its way into a spiraled shape so that its irregular palm could swallow Zalrafel’s body. Instead it was cut into pieces by one enchanted stroke of the Elder blade; a single line cleanly divided the hand in two, clearing a passage for Zalrafel to fly through on his descent. The rest of the hand burned away as he passed, a quick flare in the background when his sword neared its target.
-----Such was the power of the Dolorous Stroke, the enchantment which made his sword not only cut, but break away matter at its most basic levels. Drekis had barely seen the first cut, but he could see the second motion coming for his head, and so he backed away and let gravity take his form from the platform, falling down just as Zalrafel came down blade-first on his previous position. Half of the tower collapsed as soon as the Elder blade pierced the structure’s surface; Zalrafel was quick to launch himself from the unstable collapse. Together the two fell into the dark pits which had been formed as a side effect of the mountains Drekis created, Drekis with his back turned to the earth, smiling up at Zalrafel who came down in pursuit.
-----Zal gripped the Elder blade’s handle with both of his hands and brought it up close to his face so that the blade was tipped down, ready to pierce through the chaos avatar’s flesh when gravity severed the distance between them. They were seconds away from contact, but Drekis reached the sand-laden ground first, and without missing a moment darted away like a shadow leaping across the land. Zalrafel was there a moment later, impaling the sand with his sword and turning a small circle of it into glass before he sprang after Drekis.
-----Waves of sand trailed behind them, Drekis darting away and Zalrafel closing the distance little by little. Clouds of dust rose up around them, eventually masking them from sight so that Drekis could stop unseen and lash out with an arm. A metallic sound rang out as three long fingers grew and sharpened into blades, but this transformation gave the arms motion away, and Zal burst out of the dust clouds with his sword raised high, using his own weight to push the Elder blade through the claw until much of the arm had been split.
-----Traces of red smoldered in-between the fissures; Drekis hissed, bearing rows of crocodilian teeth at the fallen angel. Briefly he gripped the damaged arm with his other and bent his body back away from several more slices. Two tentacles sprang up from underneath his form, both digging through the sand and wriggling their way up to attack from below.
-----One of them came from the right and was easily sliced apart by three flashing lines of silver, the unperceivable marks of Zal’s slashes; but the second came at him from the left at the same time, and like the snap of a whip or a snake’s desperate strike it lashed him across the cheek and forced the fallen angel into a falling spin.
-----The lash seemed to bother him very little, and occupied him far less than Drekis intended, for though he spun three times in the air he managed to land on his feet, and no more than a second had gone by before he put the momentum of the blow to his own use, pivoting on his left foot and launching himself back at Drekis.
-----Sparks poured down Drekis’ right arm like a flow of water and gathered into his palm when he gestured to his opponent. However, Zalrafel was too quick this time, seeing the imminent blast and instinctively changing his target from Drekis’ main body to the offending arm. With an all too timely cut he took off the hand, and so the chaos energy that was assembling there dissipated, faded away.
-----Annoyance flashed across Drekis’ face, but that fleeting moment melted into an arched grin, an unnaturally wide gap that would befall earth-shaking laughter, but instead only a wash of emerald green, brighter even than the sparks that Zal had cut away, flew out of that gaping jaw. The beam, somehow, seemed larger than Drekis himself; it was enough to swallow Zalrafel whole, and the not only did the explosion curl around the swordsman, its backlash carried the energy behind Drekis, pouring over the entire abyss so that from Devyn’s vantage it looked as if all of the darkness below had been brightened.
-----Soyokaze was relaxed, even as two dozen pillars fell into fragments. His tower stood strong, even as the light faded and the darkness returned. Within that abyss he could still see, could sense the presence of both beings. That last attack was Drekis’ doing, and it had done more than enough to kill any normal individual—but that was not enough to end Zalrafel’s life.
-----When all was clear, the valley below the pillars was entirely glass, though fractured at every inch so that only distorted reflection gave it a mess of colors. Zalrafel was there, completely unharmed, looking rather impassionate before a slight smile broke across his face. His sword was stabbed into the ground, his right hand gently stroking the tip of the handle.
-----“My will, has even denied the wishes of heaven, the verdicts of the almighty,” Zalrafel began to say. “Not even the Powers that Be have his kind of power, and so they, too, cannot take away that which gives me life, which keeps me going. Now, do you understand, what true immortality is?”
-----Drekis’ body hunched over and grew several feet, arms elongating into disproportionate vines with six curved, bladed fingers each. “You think you’re immortal, fallen angel? You’re already dead, a phantom left behind as a stain on existence, and that is only a product of your willpower. Mind over matter, denial of even an omnipotent decision; quite elaborate, but I don’t require such complications. If it is your willpower that keeps you going on, that lets you rationalize yourself as immune to damage, to death, then all I have to do is break that will of yours; and let me assure you, breaking the mind is more often than not far more enjoyable than bringing harm to the body.”
-----“Nothing you could do would even approach what I’ve already gone through.” Zal replied, bringing the hilt of the Elder blade to his right hip and pointing the sword at the ground. “All I have left is revenge, the success of the void, and you’re just another wall.”
-----Shapes of fire spat out of Drekis’ chest, four in all, which struck Zalrafel in succession. Zal’s rushed through the attacks, never faltering, never fading away. His will made his body tougher, stronger than anything these fireballs could break, and so he passed through them, explosion and all, even as shards of glass rained in all directions. Feeling no pain and not being slowed down in the slightest, Zalrafel jumped into the path of the final fire projectile and emerged, riding the concussive wave to collide with Drekis. The Dolorous strike sliced into Drekis’ torso, cutting and burning away most of the dark matter until the chaos avatar was almost split in half, connected only by the thin strips of his neck. As his severed body fell back, Zalrafel stood them, calmly raising his sword across his eyes to stare at his target.
-----Devyn turned his attention to the larger battles being fought on the island and, having found them to be unchanging, returned to Zalrafel’s fight. “It isn’t like Zalrafel to use the Dolorous strike twice. Then again, Drekis is not the kind of being who will fall to just one of those. Just what are you planning?”
-----Kaas, scaling his tower three meters so that he could obtain a better view of the surrounding area, said, “Does he intend to disintegrate all of his body so that nothing is left? If that tactic could work…I would think that Dorchadaas Laan could have done the job, but…”
-----Drekis’ body began to reform, but Zalrafel jumped onto the regenerating torso and stabbed the Elder blade deep inside. There he stood on top of Drekis’ body, weighing him down and keeping the sword firmly planted in his chest. Chaos energy burst out of the wound, crackling and snaking around the blade. At first it looked as if the energy was violently pushing itself up, past the blade and through the handle where it entered Zalrafel through his hands and coursed into the rest of his body.
-----Kaas and Devyn noticed later that Zalrafel was not in pain, and instead the energy that was seeping out of Drekis was actually becoming one with Zalrafel.
-----“So that’s it.” Devyn said. “You really think you can drain him away then?”
-----The Dolorous strike was not the only power of the Elder blade which Zalrafel wielded; at other times it could drain the energy, perhaps even the very life, out of a person and give that vitality and power to Zalrafel; and yet, there seemed to be no end to the flickering bolts flying out of Drekis’ chest, and for some reason the chaos avatar had ceased all movement, practically allowing Zal to stand on his chest and hold his blade there.
-----At last Drekis spoke, his head bent back looking at the sky. “My power can not be drained, at least not by a limited container like you. Do not forget that my energy is chaos, and chaos is not something that a person like you can control!” With that he suddenly threw his body forward, catapulting Zalrafel off; but he did not let the fallen angel fly away; he reached up and caught the Elder blade after it left his flesh, and he held onto it like he had Dorchadaas Laan, in complete defiance of something that should have unraveled his body.
-----Zalrafel held onto his sword, dangling down with his feet suspended five feet off of the ground. Failing to break free of the dark one’s grip, he waved his free hand out, barely catching the edge of Drekis’ body. One touch was sufficient. One touch, and that was all it took to make most of the form fall apart, first cracking the body into pieces that fizzled and seemed to cry out individually, and even the arm that held him lost all of its strength.
-----It was not only the blade that was Zalrafel’s weapon. He was a violation of reality, a thing that should have died long ago when the almighty, a deity higher even than the powers that be, decreed that he should have suffered a mortal’s fate. By his will alone Zalrafel survived, and as Drekis had said, he was a stain on reality, and to touch him was the experience the void, the unreality.
-----Yet Drekis could not be defeated by the smashing of his body. Entire sections of his being would be disintegrated, but he was not limited to mere reformation or regeneration, it was more like entirely new portions of his body were snapping into existence, replacing whatever was lost; and so despite the touch of Zalrafel, Drekis recovered before the fallen angel reached the ground; his right hand divided into three spears which sprang out so fast that there was only a momentary gust of wind and then suddenly they were buried in Zalrafel’s gut.
-----Drekis followed through, stretching his arm out over a hundred feet and carrying Zalrafel into the air, digging the spears deeper into his flesh. Before the arm stopped it forced its captive through three rock spires, and when it finally did cease its movement it lit up with an energy that was vaguely like fire, though it was red and lacking all of the other colors of natural flame.
-----These flares engulfed Zal’s body, and once it was aflame Drekis hurled his arm down and smashed the Fallen into the glass. The shattering rang out in the valley. Devyn and Kaas watched eagerly, their eyes focused on the crater of cracks that the black arm retracted from.
-----“So, your body is not immune from harm after all.” Drekis boomed.
-----Zalrafel scaled the crater, his hair drifting to one side, clothes partially torn. Three large holes were left in his chest, but it was not normal blood behind those wounds, it was a prismatic light that darkened with time until it was again filled with a mockery of flesh. “I still will not die.”
-----“I don’t have to kill you Zalrafel.” Drekis said as he snapped his fingers. The glass beneath Zal’s feet turned into a fleet of glass-hands that tackled his legs. Zalrafel’s eyes flashed open for a bit, a hint of surprise that didn’t necessarily follow with fear. He looked Drekis directly in the eyes, almost daring him to do whatever he could.
-----“It won’t be long now.” Drekis held a hand in the air and waved it down; in response all of the rock towers surrounding them collapsed inward, gravitating towards Drekis and Zalrafel’s location. Even those pillars that supported Devyn and Kaas fell, not with natural force, but as if a giant of indomitable strength had struck them down.
-----The collapse was heard throughout the island, and the silence that followed was unsettling to all who had witnessed even a single blow of the epic battles which had been fought in that valley. Nothing could be seen there anymore.
---6---
Double Betrayal
-----“Did you really think I was blind to your deception Rheomyr!?” Tundra yelled. Blue waves of mist shot out of his mouth as he spat the words. “The council may have turned a blind eye to it, but I’ve been watching, waiting…are you listening!”
-----Seryko, his back turned to the icy Fallen while Shadowcast stood between them, fumbled with the control panels of the great weapon before turning his head. “Please, Tundra, you’re suspicious of every newcomer who joins the order of the Fallen. If you were so certain of my intentions from the beginning, then why have I been here for years?”
-----“You were a bit more sly than the others,” Tundra replied, holding his fists out. Clouds of the blue mist circled around his hands and slowly trailed off, like smoke, into the air. “You’ve bided your time, waiting years before taking action, but I’ve never taken my eyes off you for a second. As soon as I heard you hadn’t joined the frontline down there…I knew.”
-----“Must frustrate you, to know that all along not only have you been conspiring with a traitor…but with someone of Drekis’ Empire, the very ones who will bring this tower down.” His eyes narrowed when they met with Tundra’s, and in that moment they seemed to turn black and glossy like orbs quickly lathered in oil.
-----Shadowcast, his cape flowing inwards to conceal everything below his neck, spun away from Tundra to look at Seryko. “I do not understand this…you say you obey the will of Drekis, yet you intend to shoot him with the most powerful weapon we possess?”
-----“And you, Shadowcast…” Tundra shouted, pointing his finger. “You’re the worst of all. You’re a genuine part of the Fallen, one of the eldest, and yet not only do you sit in the labyrinth for years and do nothing, but here you side with traitorous vermin.”
-----“I’m not certain whose side I’m on yet,” Alexander responded, facing Tundra again. “Maybe, I’m just on my side.”
-----A chill ran out from Tundra’s location, coating the floor, walls, and ceiling with a very thin layer of white frost. “I’ve waited a long time for this. The council always held me back, but not anymore; I have an excuse this time.” He punched his fists together, mixing the clouds of freezing mist into one clump and then hurled it towards Shadowcast. It came like a bullet, instantly crossing the distance and freezing Alexander from head to toe. For a few seconds there was a sound of cracking and creaking associated with the spread of the ice over his face, and when the ice sculpture was complete it shattered, broke apart into a thousand wads of ice.
-----“That will be your fate as well.” Tundra said, his entire body barely cloaked by a phosphorescent fog.
-----“You don’t give me nearly as much credit as I deserve,” Rheomyr said, gesturing to the frozen pieces on the floor, “and I think, perhaps you don’t give your former team mates the credit they deserve.”
-----Though he doubted that anyone could have survived being both fragmented and frozen over, Tundra stopped at these words and watched the pile of ice, his jaw dropping into a gasp and then reeling into a sneer as the pile began to melt before his eyes. It wasn’t just melting, it was sizzling, bubbling. Each melted piece gave way to a dark cloud within, a black-grey wisp that rose up to join with the others in midair.
-----“So, you’re alive are you Shadowcast?” Tundra spoke to the dark cloud hovering just above his head. “If you can’t be broken, then I’ll just have to reduce you to absolute zero and leave you as a statue!” He fired two shots in succession, one from each hand, this time as focused beams which froze matter on contact; but the cloud weaved and moved in every direction at once, not bound by muscles or bones, and so it left holes in itself, just large enough for the beams to pass. Then the cloud stretched out in five ways, like the fingers of a hand moving to wrap around something.
-----Tundra was caught in the middle, swirled up in a vortex of blackness that he could not see through. Within that cloud he felt his eyes tear up without control; his skin ached, then began to burn with the feeling of someone meticulously peeling the layers off inch by inch. He held his breath, not daring to breath in any of this toxic poison. There was only one option remaining.
-----His body dispersed, literally turning into the same kind of blue mist that had shrouded his fists earlier. Alexander’s black cloud form had pushed against his physical body, kept him from escaping the death trap, but as one form of immaterial to another he was now able to seep out and gather himself elsewhere.
-----Free of the miasma, Tundra reformed into his solid form. The black cloud was still in place, and Seryko, that overconfident bastard, was ignoring the fight, leaving his back turned to him and messing with the weapon controls.
-----Knuckles cracked with anticipation as he thought of zapping the hapless fool in the back, but before he could even stand Shadowcast was there, also returning to his human form and rushing to fill the void between Tundra and Rheomyr.
-----“If you’re fighting only for yourself, why protect him!” Tundra demanded. He did not particularly care about Shadowcast’s alignment, but it frustrated him to have to fight two traitors all at once while the rest of the Fallen were busy fighting off the Drekis minions. “Just what has he offered you that is so much better than what Devyn or Marc Dollar ever gave you.”
-----“What they give me is irrelevant. What they accomplish is another thing—that’s what matters in the end. The Fallen are stagnant now, nothing like they once were. You can tell just by looking at the people that fill their ranks now, low life criminals…like you!” Shadowcast was mostly humanoid and flesh, but his right arm remained as a black cloud, vaguely shaped in mockery of a normal limb. This form was not limited to the length and form of a flesh arm, for ever pore of the dark gas was able to stretch and bend freely; and so it lashed out, like a tentacle grasping for prey; but when it hit it did not grab Tundra, it burst out and surrounded him with another burning shade of miasma.
-----Not only did Tundra’s clothing and skin begin to seethe from the exposure, the miasma was also tight and maintained a strange kind of hold on him; it did not pull or tug, but instead it seemed to shrink and reel in so that Alexander was pulled into him; no doubt that was exactly what Shadowcast intended. Midway through the approach, Shadowcast materialized a sword with a golden crested handle and a blade as clear as diamond. Out of thin air the weapon appeared, and the miasma prevented Tundra from dodging the incoming slice.
-----Seryko, finding the device rejecting him, watched as Shadowcast’s blade cut through Tundra’s face; but before the sword could taste human flesh the body of Tundra disappeared in a flash of blue. Shadowcast pulled his attacking arm back, puffs of darkness collected back and became thick, coagulating like blood; soon the immaterial solidified, hardened into a humanoid arm with the chime of quaking rock.
-----Icy mist accumulated just six feet in front of Alexander; a split still halved the cloud, but the two parts stuck together and sculpted into the familiar form of Tundra. “It seems that we’re at a bit of a stand still. Both of us can dematerialize. However, your sword and your dissolving cloud won’t be able to do the job before I freeze you over.”
-----“Short sighted as ever. I wouldn’t expect a second rate Fallen like you to understand.”
-----“What was that!?”
-----“You are a corporeal being, someone who turns into an ice storm. Conversely, I am a miasma, a deathcloud in the form of a human. You will never be able to reduce me to zero, because even when frozen I will unconsciously melt your ice away. And you…all I have to do is catch you off guard when you make a mistake—and you will make a mistake—and then I can cut and melt your disgusting body before you deform.”
-----“Interesting,” the voice of Seryko came over them both. The blue-haired traitor joined ranks with Shadowcast, casually walking into battle with his hands behind his back. “It would seem that I need you to access the weapon as well.”
-----“I can’t do that while this one bothers me,” Shadowcast said.
-----“That’s why I will stop him for you. Quickly now, activate the weapon. Just ready the controls and I’ll handle the rest.”
-----Shadowcast shifted focus from one to the other. After coming this far, he felt a sudden urge to finish the fight, like he would not be satisfied until he held Tundra’s head in his palms and watched it burn to nothingness. Still, the confidence in Seryko’s face was genuine, not a bluff, and so with a minor groan he backed away, dissolving into a deathcloud that danced its way towards the control panels.
-----“Another fool for me to add to my collection.” Tundra said. “I know just where I’ll put your frozen carcass. I think I have just enough space left just to the right of where I intend to put Vizeman.”
-----“My, my, just what would the council think if they knew about your morbid ambitions for your own ilk.” Seryko laughed. “No wonder no one came with you; they figured they’d just let you come up here and die didn’t they. Poor soul…just now wanted.”
-----“Damn you to hell!” Tundra fired ice blasts from both hands. Seryko held his head back as if to break out in laughter, but instead he cracked a brief smile and made a half turn to bear his right side to the blasts. With one hand he opened up his off-white cape, let the blast strike at its inner lining; but there was no sound of impact, no cracking sight of ice crawling on his skin.
-----The ice passed into the cape, much like it would pass through a doorway or an empty hall. Seryko’s cape waved slightly but held strong against the freezing waves that were entering it.
-----“Just what the hell..?” Tundra cut off the attack when he saw the haze of blue and green light from inside the cape. The outside was normal cloth, but inside it was no average lining. Whatever it was gladly swallowed up his ice and was insatiable.
-----“You fancy yourself some fancy ice user? Some kind of mini-Toc Darkone?” Seryko taunted.
-----“Just shut up already. Stop trying to change the subject to me; this is about your deception—your betrayal!”
-----Seryko stretched his right arm out, allowed his cape to drape down so that an entire section of the glowing inside was visible. “Inside of my cape is a pocket dimension,” he explained. “The realm inside is a place so cold that you can’t even breathe; your ice won’t effect it.” Without any motion a warped bubble formed at the center of the dangling cloth, and then a blast of cold wind and ice burst out of the dimensional hole.
-----Tundra braced himself, with his hands, let the swirling attack brush over him. “Don’t make me laugh! So you can expose some of the cold air from your little pocket world. Ice can’t effect me either. This is another stand still.”
-----“You’re fond of that term aren’t you? But like Shadowcast I am not as limited as you are. I still have the option of swallowing you with my cape. Even if the cold there doesn’t bother you, there’s always the backup plan of just leaving you there.”
-----Although neither fighter had gained any ground with this exchange, Seryko had bought several minutes of time, and with that Shadowcast was able to activate the machine, punch in his ancient command code, and set up the targeting menu without interruption. “It’s ready for you!”
-----“Oh?” Seryko said with a smile. “Faster than I expected. This is your lucky day Tundra; once I’ve fired the weapon I’ll take my leave, and I’ll be taking Shadowcast with me.”
-----“The hell you will. I’ll freeze you before you ever reach the controls!” He aimed for Seryko’s feet, the one area where he could not guard with that estranged cape of his. Ice gathered around his fists, was ready to fly out—and then everything went dark.
-----Tundra dropped onto his face, unconscious and unmoving. A lone figure stood behind him, slowly stepped over the icy Fallen’s body and dusted his hands off.
-----“I had a feeling that you might show up. Though to be honest I wasn’t counting on it.”
-----Blitzkrieg, fastest of all the Fallen, shrugged with a crooked grin. “I had a lot of decisions to make. Needed to make sure I wasn’t committing myself to a mistake—now where would be the fun in that?”
-----“I assume this means you won’t try to stop us?” Seryko asked.
-----“I side with the winning team,” Blitzkrieg informed him. “It was the way back then on a little planet called Earth, and it’s the same now. Before I figured the Fallen were my best bet, but that’s been turned upside down now hasn’t it.”
-----“A wise choice. This Tower is about to collapse after all. If you help me see my plan come to fruition, then I just might be able to grant you a position on the winning side. Though, I’m afraid I can’t promise your spoils will be anything like what I’ve promised Shadowcast here; you’re arrival has caught me off guard a little after all.”
-----“I don’t care about rank. Just to be on the winning side, the one that will win the war, assume all of the power. As long as that happens, I don’t really give a damn about the who and the why.”
-----“You need to hurry!” Shadowcast shouted. “Before the security automatically times out.”
-----“Right.” Seryko’s body gently lifted off of the floor and glided to the control panel. His speed was no where near that of Blitzkrieg’s, but still he was light and quick, capable of leaving an evanescent trail of after images in his wake. “Excellent work. Drekis will be pleased,” he glossed over the information before tapping the keys.
-----“And yet you plan to shoot at him do you?”
-----“Have patience Shadowcast, you will understand soon enough. I am carrying out Drekis’ orders after all.”
-----“This is what he wants?”
-----“Yes,” he pressed a few more keys and then hit a large red button that took a great deal of strength to hold down. “There, a delayed time period of five minutes. I suggest we make for the nearest teleportation platform and make our exit.”
-----“Are you sure we can trust this one here?” Shadowcast took a few steps towards Blitzkrieg.
-----“He seems earnest enough,” Seryko replied. “Come, lets leave the ice fool here to his fate.”
-----“If you still doubt me,” Blitzkrieg began, “I could always take down any of the Fallen that we come across on our way out.”
-----“Don’t worry yourself,” Seryko said as he made for the exit. “I’ll bring you both before Drekis; he’ll be the one to determine where you loyalties might…potentially lie.”
---7---
Crumble
-----Dust settled over the crumbled valley where the hundred rock towers had collapsed. Mounds of brittle rock the size of cars now littered the ground, burying everything that was beneath it in a sea of brown haze.
-----From out of this disaster came a single beacon of light, a single force that pushed away the rocks—Drekis’ barrier. The shield expanded, creating just enough flat ground for Drekis to evenly stand on. His form lifted up so that he could gaze at the destruction he had wrought, and he knew that somewhere in this caved-in wasteland were three Fallen, hiding—or, perhaps, biding their time while thinking of new options.
-----Zalrafel was the first to show himself, pushing off heavy boulders with a groan and cracking his neck to one side. His body was undamaged, but it looked worn and tiresome. Still, it was unlikely that his demeanor matched his interior passion; as long as he had the will to fight the condition of his abominable body didn’t matter. He still clung to his sword, swinging it several times to cut apart some of the rocks that blocked his view of the chaos tyrant.
-----“I wasn’t expecting you to die just then,” Drekis bellowed, “but I do hope that that hurt like hell.”
-----“A minor annoyance,” Zalrafel stumbled out of the rubble until he could jump on top of a taller, somewhat jagged rock pointing towards the sky.
-----“Use of that disintegration technique drains you doesn’t it? Pity that it won’t kill me in one stroke like it does with all the others. This was an experiment on your behalf was it not? You all wanted to test me, see if my claims of immortality were true, and so you have. None of your efforts are a viable strategy; all three of you failed.”
-----“Maybe not. Immortality is just a word, and I know it well. All things can die, pass away from this world; just that some ‘immortal’ beings are much harder to kill than others. Sometimes you just have to find that one exact way to make it all end.”
-----“I see,” Drekis smiled. “So then you too, must have your weaknesses. Then again, neither of us likely possesses the means to kill one another—at least not right now.”
-----“You have no right to be so calm about this Drekis,” Zalrafel challenged. “This is a stalemate, maybe not as a result of balanced power, but certainly to the point that neither of us can die given the circumstances. A stalemate, for you, means a loss here. You will not get past me, and therefore will never reach the tower.”
-----Another voice broke in, “And without you, the lesser creatures will never be able to bring it down.” Devyn Soyokaze was there, having escaped from the avalanche unseen. Now he stood on another high perch, watching the two of them from a troll’s vantage. “The barrier’s may be down, but the tower itself cannot be destroyed by any power that your mindless servants have. A valiant struggle, to the last, but you have been defeated.”
-----Dorchadaas Laan sprung out of a nearby pile, smashing boulders into dust and opening up a small crater for Kaas to crawl out of. The Avatar of Darkness had overheard all. “So, this is how it ends then.” The darkness sword served as his balance while he lifted himself up. Somehow this result was disappointing. It was an end without a true resolution; they had thrown all of their best at each other and in the end could not gain a foot of territory.
-----“Over? You think this over then?” Drekis said, eyes flaring up as he bared his teeth.
-----Rumbles overtook the Fallen Island, far greater than any of the quakes that the battles had caused so far. All eyes looked to Drekis as the source of this power, but the energy, and the quake itself, were coming from a different direction, from behind Devyn and the others.
-----They looked towards the tower, the spire of the Fallen which pierced into the heavens, and at its peak they saw the pyramid that sat at the top, glowing and burning like a second sun. Normally it was black and grey like the rest of the tower, but now it had a golden hue, and the emblem of the Fallen which decorated each face of the pyramid was now cast in red.
-----“But that’s…!” Kaas exclaimed.
-----“Can’t be…the weapon,” Devyn said to himself. “Zalrafel, did you give the order to use it?”
-----Zalrafel’s lips curled down, “Damn, it must have been Dollar.”
-----“Even he would never activate the weapon before the council gave the order.” Devyn replied.
-----Drekis’ laughter nearly equaled the reverberations that the weapon’s charge-up sustained. His glare had bent into a crooked grin, and the globe which had been his shield was now gradually lifting into the air and taking Drekis with it. “Have to go through you to get to the tower do I? You should know by now that I don’t play by the rules.”
-----“It’s his doing!?” Kaas shouted, pointing Dorchadas Laan at the ascending bubble.
-----“Impossible!” Zalrafel shouted over the hisses and booms of the weapon. “No being could simply access the weapon from out here, much less give it an order to fire!”
-----“Then one of our allies?” Kaas suggested.
-----Devyn looked at the eye-shaped emblem on the side that faced them; the energy was collecting over that one spot, condensing a power that could strafe through an entire city into an area smaller than a horse. Glistening with power, the eye seemed to ‘open’ and scour the area, looking for the one that would receive the punishment, the greatest of all the Fallen’s devices; and there Devyn traced the death gaze to its target.
-----“It’s going after Drekis.”
-----“Then it is one of us.” Kaas said.
-----Sheathing his sword, Zalrafel held his hair away from his face and looked up at Drekis. “I don’t care for this. Even if it is one of our own, we never gave them the right.”
-----In the sky where pulses of yellow burst towards the clouds, Drekis floated in front of the pyramid, staring the eye head on. His barrier increased in intensity, growing out until it was the size of the pyramid itself.
-----“Now is the time to end it.” Drekis boomed.
-----All sound vanished; for an instant it was like time stopped—a roar and a crash so profound and tremendous that everything else in the world had to let it pass before going on. Light and energy broke free of the eye, shot from the pyramid like water through a rotted dam.
-----A thick beam, outlined by unstable lines of power light lightning, and swirling with white-hot particles that swarmed inside and out like fireflies, hit the barrier, aiming straight for Drekis and hitting its mark. Its power was enough to even swallow the gigantic barrier in its red fury.
-----“He is a fool!” Kaas announced. “No barrier could possibly withstand the great weapon.”
-----But where the shield should have broken, should have yielded to the ultimate form of destruction that they had, it instead struggled against this wall, tore at it like a beast with broken fangs and dulled claws. It was furious and it was terrifying, but it did not pierce. They were watching the impossible happen.
-----“Drekis…he’s not trying to block it.” Devyn noticed.
-----Together the three of them watched, witnessed the flickering bulbs of white light begin to swing and spin around Drekis’s barrier. Each moment made the shield brighter, and against this impassable wall the destroyer beam waned, shrank down into weakness and frailty; but some of its former power still existed, and it was a glow that stormed within Drekis’ shield, raging inside and outside of that sphere so that Drekis could reach up and touch the crackling energy with his palms.
-----“He absorbed it?” Kaas said.
-----“Barrier assimilated it all.” Zalrafel corrected.
-----Drekis held both of his arms to the sky, let the energy that was pouring around him gather and direct itself to a single focal point on the barrier. In front of him, the amassed power forged a second bubble in the surface of the first, a glowing tumor on the side of the barrier.
-----“Let this be a day of history for the Khazanians. A symbol for the closure of an age, and the beginning of mine!” Drekis shouted the words so that all could hear, and its chaotic tone not only shot through the air but traversed the world in a way that trembled the minds of the strongest telepaths. A single wave of his hand, and it was done; by his will the second bubble burst, and just as the eye of the pyramid had done before the energy crashed out; only this time it was a twisted sort of energy, all the power of the original beam augmented by the uncanny nature of chaos magic.
-----So the Fallen watched the lights in the sky, and panic swept across the inhabitants of the island—for the symbol of their power, of their guaranteed station on Khazan, vanished under the light of this stolen attack. It hit the pyramid first, drilling into it until the armor gave way; energy leaked out of the cracks, and once it began to break down the beam sliced downward, piercing through obsidian, darksteel, diamond, and every other material that it met. So it was that floor by floor, dimension by dimension, the tower was split down its side.
-----A sharp cry washed over the island, and dark circles of mystic power threw themselves out of the gashes and breaches in the structure. The base of the tower collapsed, and with it came the rest of it; crumbling story by story, piece by piece. A moment that seemed to last forever, an unimaginable vision.
-----None of the Fallen could believe what they had seen, what they had heard. They continued to deny it all, even as the highest peaks of the tower broke apart and let the fractured pyramid fall to ground zero.
-----“A valiant struggle indeed!” Drekis roared, his barrier slowly fading away the leave his dark form floating in the air. “But it would appear that I am victorious this day. The Fallen shall fall…and all others will join them soon.”
---8----
Evacuation
-----Eyes closed; mind and body shrouded in darkness and the unmatched caress of rest. There was nothing in that entire battlefield that could shake him out of this dream like state—it lasted through bombs and bombardments, through screeches and cries of victory. It put the entire world away, until the tower fell.
-----When the Fallen tower burst apart, crumbled to ground, it sent a chill down the spine of Khazan itself, an unleashing of magic so encroaching that it was felt everywhere on the nexus, and it was heard like a yelp of pain, as if the tower were a living creature having met its doom.
-----This disaster, this ultimate tremor, was what waked Dreiden, forced his eyes to tear open and his pupils to dart in every direction like a madman. Covered in dust and dried blood, Adonis sat up, feeling a tight pain in his abdomen; he shook off the dust, wiped away the blood on his face, and frantically searched the horizons of the island for the tower.
-----Only a nightmare…it could only have been a fool’s dream. But no—sitting there in the beginning hours of darken, he saw only the colorless remnants of the great pyramid, and around it the rubble of the greatest structure ever built on Khazan. The tower was gone.
-----Overcome with anger, he forced himself to stand in spite of the pain; physical pain was nothing. The name Drekis beamed into his head, allowing him to assign a name to his curses; but with this name he saw an image before him, a reminder in the back of his head which told of an armored figure, a nearly indestructible titan; grossly colored flesh and plates of a forbidden metal, the eyes that glowed from beneath those chain mail wires, and those axes of pure flame. Adonis remembered him, recalled the final explosion he had caused. His current condition was a result of that, a backlash of his own power—a foolish move in retrospect, but also possibly the only way to have permanently destroyed the enemy.
-----Somehow forgetting the tower’s oblivion, he searched the area meticulously, even lifting rocks and peering down small crevices just to catch a glimpse of Attragon. At first he saw nothing; the entire valley was barren, void of deminite or Fallen. The machines of the Fallen had gone deathly silent, and in the distance he heard some signs of battle, though it was faint, far. Satisfaction began to lessen his wounds, allowed his shoulders to rise and his breath to become even. Two minutes of searching, and nothing to be found—until finally he chose to look over the nearby cliff edge, the one place that he had been hesitant to check. Standing at the tip, overlooking a ruined land that could no longer support life, he saw countless strands of flesh crawling, sliding towards a central spot; and there he witnessed a glob of the sinew and blood, the culmination of the pieces of Attragon which he had scattered across the island.
-----Even across great distances, the destroyed pieces of the Drekis general had found their way back to one another.
-----“This is absurd!” He found himself muttering under his breath. “Still alive. And the tower….” The desire to fight still existed, but his better judgment corrected his impulse, told him that there was no longer anything to fight for. He was supposed to defend the tower, and it was gone now.
-----Under these conditions he regretfully fled, leaving the area long before the gathering pieces could form back into a complete Attragon. Like all Fallen, Dreiden was trained to head for a specific place in times of crisis: the south-eastern regions of the outer swamps on the isle. Never in the Fallen’s history had it been necessary to use it.
-----Fast as ever, he arrived at the designated area, hidden behind leagues of thick brush and dank trees, which housed a meek teleportation array. The magical template, a small stone platform with six drawn circles and rune emblems etched across them, was identical to most of the teleportation devices inside of the tower, but this was outside, hidden away from their enemies sight for the moment.
-----Already many of the Fallen were leaving. They were lined up, dozens—and soon hundreds, of Fallen warriors marching through six lines in order to make their escape. A somewhat disgraceful sight, and yet he wondered if there was anything else they could do.
-----These teleporters traveled to different areas of the surface, and had long been used by the Fallen to conduct secret operations on the ground, allowing their allies to instantly warp back to the floating isle even if they lacked the luxury of flight or transport. Rather than wait in the growing, tedious line, Adonis pushed his way—violently in some cases—through the mob and came to stand on the stone platforms where Kaas, Marc Dollar, Devyn, and Zalrafel were standing. These four were guiding the others into their designated spots, ensuring that some sense of order was kept in the evacuation.
-----“It comes to this.” Dreiden said as he approached them.
-----“You fought well Adonis,” Devyn said. “It seems, however, that we were deceived.”
-----“Certainly we underestimated his resourcefulness.” Zalrafel added.
-----“The Tower…I never saw it fall. Only the remains.”
-----“When all is said and done, it was rock and metal,” Devyn said, glaring at the area where the tower could once be seen from the platform. “Nothing more. The magic which gave it power, which gave it feeling and presence, it still lingers. Knowing that, who can honestly say that this is the last we’ll see of it.”
-----“Though the island is lost,” Dreiden said. “Where will we go?”
-----“To Khazan city as I originally planned; but our intentions have changed—somewhat. Drekis and the people of Khazan think that our kind are chained to this land in the sky; but we shall show them otherwise.”
-----Blue wisps entered the area like a breeze, bringing a cold chill that nearly froze the murky ground of the swamps. The mist reformed, becoming the body of Tundra, bent over at the knees, holding the back of his neck with one hand. “Damn it all,” he coughed the words up before his body was half-built.
-----“You survived Tundra.” Zalrafel said rather uncaringly. “You were in the tower when it went down were you not?”
-----Tundra’s eyes blazed. “Rheomyr! It was Seryko Rheomyr who fired the weapon; and Alexander Shadowcast, that traitor gave him access to it.”
-----“How ironic,” Devyn smiled. “A man of complete apathy finally does something, and it brings the ruin of our home.”
-----“Seryko must be an encouraging figure to make Shadowcast move,” Dreiden said. “I recall Alexander searching the halls for Rheomyr before; I take it he is not one of us then.”
-----“Of course not!” Tundra yelled. “He was a spy, an agent of Drekis all along. He’s not the only traitorous bastard either.”
-----“Calm down,” Zalrafel replied.
-----“Calm down!? I tell you I was knocked down by Blitzkrieg! The backstabbing nazi betrayed us at the same time.”
-----Marc Dollar fiddled with his suit and walked towards a teleportation array. “Blitzkrieg did always side with the people he liked best; the man has no loyalty to principles, only to his own joy. Can’t blame him for being human I guess. The only thing that matters to me is the Eversor; pilfered by undeserving, mindless little rodents. Shame really. Damn shame. Tomorrow’s another day however, and a few billion down the drain is nothing off of Dollarcorp’s back. I’ll be returning to Dollarcorp HQ thankyou; do as you please, and be in contact. I’d much rather continue support from the sidelines if you don’t mind.”
-----“That’s fine,” Devyn said. “Seryko and Shadowcast are enemies now; we’ll consider them part of Drekis’ Empire now; I’d have rather not lost Blitzkrieg as well—we’ll deal with his transactions when the time comes. One thing at a time after all; right now our goal is survival. Then we regroup.”
-----“And after that?” Adonis asked.
-----“Can there be anything else,” Devyn responded. “They will feel our wrath.”
End
Next:
Chapter 23:
Chaos vs. Light |