Stormblade 4 C22: Burning (3)

22 - Burning (3)

Three wasn’t a team.

It was what we had, though—and between Ellen’s crazy new skill and Angelo Lawrence’s continued rippling assault, there was a momentary gap in the monsters.

Bernard and the Portal Tyrant slammed into that gap like a hammer and wedge.

I was strong. I was, without a doubt, one of the strongest delvers in Phoenix. And I had more potential than anyone else, with the possible exception of Ellen. But the two S-Rank guild leaders hit the monsters harder than anything I’d seen before. Brass and silk corpses flew through the air, dead before they hit the ground. Bernard’s shield-work reminded me of the moment when we’d used Jeff as a battering ram during the trip to Carlsbad Fortress. It was a thing of beauty—and of terror.

And my entire job was to follow. Not to fight. Not to finish off the few still-living constructs. Just to stay close to Bernard and the Portal Tyrant and build my resources. It was a desperate plan, but I was confident I could pull it off.

Bernard jumped a trench, and I followed. The Portal Tyrant peeled off. He had a long hammer in his hands, and he dove into the massive trench, hammerhead whirling as he used its weight as momentum. “I’ll catch up!”

“Understood!” Bernard said. Then he was moving again.

The fourth member of our team was with us, too. Sort of. A rippling series of explosions shredded the monsters in front of Bernard, and he dove right into the radiation. It crackled against his barrier, and my teeth itched, but we kept going even as Angelo Lawrence’s assault rocked the desert. He was giving it his all, too.

The S-Rank tank pushed even harder. His aura slammed out like a brick wall. It didn’t do damage. Instead, it was more like the Lonely Mage’s skill—a wall of force that enemies couldn’t force their way through.

I could, though. But I didn’t.

Instead, I waited.

Waited while A-Rank monsters died by the dozen to Angelo. Waited while Terrel Young shredded scores of constructs as they followed us through the desert. Waited while Bernard forced his way forward against A and S-Ranked monsters.

My resources were filling up slowly. And I’d need them all.

There! Looming out of the steam was a single, massive tent made from silk. Brass poles the size of streets held it up, and monsters emerged from inside. “That’s it!” I shouted.

“Got it. Be quick,” Bernard said. He ripped his aura back in until it barely covered the three of us. Then a massive explosion knocked me to one knee as the Light of Dawn unleashed Fusion right on top of us.

It hurt, but Bernard’s shield held until the worst of it was over. Then he lowered it, and his aura slashed out behind us.

“Go,” he said.

I went.

◄▼►

Long, long ago, the Craftsman had possessed a name.

He’d possessed many things. A wife. Children. Friends and neighbors who lived, worked, and played around his smithy. Hopes and dreams that weren’t the whispered need to hunt, fight, and kill.

Now, he possessed only two things.

The first was that whispered urge. The order to commit violence. It had been overwhelming from the moment it started, but somehow, he’d resisted. Not won. Everything he did was in service to the whisper. But resisted in his own way. Instead of taking up his hammer and going on the warpath himself, he took up his hammer and worked a new smithy that made his old forge and anvil look like a child’s toy.

Gigantic, weighted hammers slammed into half-molten brass. Molds filled with liquid metal. Gigantic looms spun world’s worth of silk into the shapes the Craftsman imagined.

He didn’t speak. There was nothing to talk to; he’d eliminated every other sentient being in his portal world long ago. His wife and children were gone. So were his friends and neighbors. If it moved, it was his creation. If it didn’t, it was still his creation, from the armored gate he’d built at the entrance to his portal world all the way to the brass-walled, silk-carpeted halls he called home. The only exceptions in the last decade had been a pair of Paragons—the bent old woman and a being of watery tendrils and too many eyes.

The Craftsman’s latest prototype, though, was far from home. It sat in a tent in the desert he’d started invading eight years ago, inanimate and frozen. Waiting for the order to hunt, fight, and kill.

The Craftsman sat in a brass chair that hissed as steam poured from it. He reached out and picked up his hammer—a long sledge on a thick steel pole. Then he raised his free hand and slammed it down onto the arm of his chair. “Now,” he said.

And, far out in the desert, the Brass Titan awoke.

◄▼►

The atmosphere shifted as I stepped into the wreckage of the tent.

My fury, Bernard the Wall’s anger, and the other S-Rankers’ rage had filled the air, and we’d fed off of it. But the moment I stepped inside the wrecked, half-melted brass cage that had once held up a massive silk tent, that all disappeared as an aura erupted from in front of me. It was an empty aura. Blank.

But the monster it surged from wasn’t.

The Brass Titan: S-Rank Monster

It stood up, easily fifteen feet tall. Bands of brass armor wrapped around its human-shaped body; it looked like a golden mummy made from metal. Its eyes glowed a dull yellow as its vision shifted onto me, then a bright crimson as it locked on. Glowing blue shields flickered to life around it, and a pair of blades made from pure, compressed steam hovered above its hands.

I grinned. This was the plan: get me in close, with as much firepower as possible, and let the S-Rankers buy me the time I needed to win.

And I knew I could do it. I’d been punching over my rank for a long time—since E-Rank. Now, I was an A-Ranker with more potential than any delver on Earth had ever had. The Brass Titan wasn’t going to change that, and it wasn’t going to threaten my friends and family anymore. And I wasn’t alone.

Stamina: 301/470, Mana: 410/600

“It’s time to end this,” I muttered. Then I moved.

So did the titan. Steam poured from the vents between the brass bands, and it burst into a sprint, twin steam-blades swinging in front of it in two massive arcs. I ducked. The swords cut the air overhead, fast enough to crack the sound barrier. Air collapsed in behind them in an explosion that rocked the frame over our heads.

Thunderbolt stance. A quick lunge to the monster’s leg. The brass plates closed over the vent as I attacked, and an arm slammed into the ground where I’d been standing as I spun to avoid it. Nimbus Edge slashed across the Brass Titan’s wrist. Steam and lightning poured from the wound as brass parted.

I smiled. The Brass Titan raised its swords and swung them again. The air cracked, and I threw myself to the side. Mistwalk stance. Storm Dance. I rematerialized across the room. Cyclone stance.

A mistake.

The Brass Herald was, by far, the fastest, strongest opponent I’d fought. Deborah didn’t hold a candle to it. In the time it took me to reappear and switch my grip, it was on me, blades lashing out. Steam punched into the Stormsteel pauldron. My armor ripped at the blade—and the steam-sword’s edge ripped at my armor. Pain rippled through my body. I cast Darkness and vanished into the cloud of blackness.

Stamina pushed into the deep cut; the Stormsteel pauldron was completely wrecked, and my shoulder was a bloody mess of crushed bones and scalded flesh. But it still bent when I forced it, Stamina dulling the sharp agony of bone fragments cutting muscle. I stepped out of the Darkness a moment later.

Lightning Chain ripped me across the wrecked tend and halfway up one of the massive brass poles. I kicked off of it and switched stances mid-air, then consumed the Wind Charge I’d just picked up. Windwalk. The brass beam buckled a moment later; the Titan’s steam blade cut through it like a trimmer through weeds, and the cage collapsed, screaming as the gigantic brass poles twisted themselves apart.

I didn’t fall, though. I stood mid-air, watching. “Come on. Show me something.”

And the Brass Titan did. Its body shifted. The bands around its neck opened, and steam vented from them in a massive cloud that reached up to the sky. Its glowing red eyes brightened, and one of the blades outright banished as the second flattened out into a shield hovering over it.

It was going caster.

A beam of compressed steam cut through the air. I shifted to the side, counting on Windwalk to keep me afloat. Then I used Mistform to dodge again as the beam cut back through me. It cut off, and the eyes started to glow again.

I pushed my aura out and let the Stormkin Avatar form.

Dad stepped away from me. His sword crackled as he plunged toward the steam barrier, then through it. His body was lightning, and the scalding heat didn’t even slow him down; he hit the Brass Titan like a missile.

I followed right behind. The steam shield was already reforming from Dad’s passage. It scorched and blistered my skin, but I didn’t care. The Spark of Life could fix it later. Right now, pressuring the Brass Titan was the only thing that mattered.

Thunderbolt Forms. I threw myself into a one-handed lunge. Nimbus Edge slipped between two brass plates, and steam poured out of the wound even as they melted and reformed to cover the injury. Dad’s sword cleaved into the plates in a two-handed slash, then cut back to break them apart. The Brass Titan shifted its weight and moved.

It was fast. But so were we.

Dad followed it. As its body shifted back to blade form, his sword cut into an arm. He kept the pressure up, and the Brass Titan had no choice but to focus on it.

Which was perfect for me.

Cyclone Forms. I ripped through the Polarity Shift combo, aiming for Thunder Crash. The static in the air built as Polarity shift fired three separate times—once for itself, once for a Stormfire Lance that ripped into the Titan’s Mana pool, and once for the Thunder Crash cast itself. The burst of lightning that hit the Brass Titan was blinding, and the thunder that echoed out after it deafened me and flattened what was left of the tent’s frame.

Brass melted, exposing the silk strings, metal cogs, and pipes inside the monstrous S-Rank construct. One of its steam blades wavered, then collapsed into rainwater. The other lashed out at me, but I wasn’t done yet.

Stormbreak.

Excluding nothing.

There were dozens of monsters in range. Two S-Rankers were close enough, too. Plenty of fuel for the flowers of lightning that erupted as positive and negative zones formed around everyone—including the Stormkin Avatar. Nothing was spared. Not ally, enemy, or memory of my dad. Seven pulses of electricity later, Stormbreak finished.

And as the Portal Tyrant sprinted toward me, I put Nimbus Edge through the half-melted, half-brittle brass blob that had been the Brass Titan’s head.

As it died, sunlight punched through the steam clouds overhead, and, inexplicably, the brass-and-silk legion started to retreat. A radio flicked on, and a familiar woman’s voice echoed through it. “Sunlight has broken through. Some monsters are shutting down inside the city, but not all of them. Whatever you S-Rankers did, it worked. Get your asses back here and secure the tower.”

The Siege of Phoenix was, somehow, broken.

◄▼►

The God of Thunder watched.

He’d been watching since the moment Kade returned, burning with three separate sources of power. The Fallen Delvers portal had been well worth it—and even better, two of them were compatible with the kid’s core. One hadn’t even given him a choice—not that Eugene could imagine Kade choosing not to claim the Stormkin Avatar.

He’d approved of giving the shadow mage more power, too. When Kade had fought against the Paragon of Hurricanes, the God of Thunder had been willing to throw all the others away. Now, he had second thoughts. The shadow mage, especially, had value to him. If keeping her alive and near in power to Kade would allow his core to strengthen, then Eugene was all for her continued existence.

But at the same time, none of it mattered. Kade wasn’t strong enough to turn the tide. Neither was the shadow mage or the tank. The tank, especially, was a weak point in the kid’s armor.

And Eugene didn’t know how to fix that.

He didn’t know how to fix the siege of the city either—not without making an appearance. And his presence on Earth would be far, far worse than Phoenix falling.

So, the God of Thunder watched. He watched as the cloud of steam parted. As sunlight ripped into it and vapor turned to nothingness. As an entire legion of monsters turned tail and fled, or hid in abandoned, burning buildings.

It made no sense. Kade hadn’t done anything special—all he’d done was kill a single S-Rank monster. A Paragon, maybe, but still. The portal in question was S-Rank itself. Dozens of the most powerful monsters that could walk on Earth were retreating across the desert, brass feet and wheels pounding the glass into sand again.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

An ancient woman, bent over her staff, naked but for her hair, and ghostly in appearance, grinned from where she stood. She’d materialized on a platform in Eugene’s world less than a second ago. “I came to congratulate you on your Paragon’s survival, and to tell you all about my latest acquisition, God of Thunder.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing that I wasn’t asked to do, and nothing that all parties didn’t agree on. I’m not the kind of woman to take advantage of desperation.” The Crone grinned. “I simply offered the younger Gerald the same deal I offer all worlds—my assistance in exchange for their participation in the Ghostmarket. And then…”

Eugene waited. In this specific world, and this one only, he could fight the Crone and win. But it wasn’t worth it, and it’d only hurt him in the long run. Their agreement was too important to compromise. “And then?” he asked after a minute.

“Oh, yes. And then I renegotiated my arrangement with the Craftsman. He was overextended and in no position to say no. Your pupil did his part, too.”

“And the Placid King?”

“Furious. As far from placid as you can get. But not thwarted. He’s been…delayed. But defeated? That was not part of our agreement—and it wasn’t part of my arrangement with the Gerald girl, either,” the Crone said. Eugene didn’t miss the amusement in her voice. He laughed with her; the Crone might be a rival, and she might be a threat, but when it came to the Placid King, the God of Thunder followed a simple policy.

The enemy of his enemy was, for the time being, a friend.