Stormblade 4 C23: Summer Scorcher (1)

23 - Summer Scorcher (1)

Councilwoman Harriet Myers slid her headset off fifteen minutes later.

There were still a lot of monsters in Phoenix. The city’s entire east side was under evacuation orders until they were cleared out, and the rest of it was quarantined by district and under a mandatory, all-day-long curfew. The GC, the guilds, and the various independent delving teams and solos were the only people who’d be on the streets for at least a week. And the S-Rankers who’d fought on the front lines would need a breather before she could redeploy them. In Angelo’s case, he’d need a few days with Sarah Cullman’s exclusive attention to recover.

But the siege was over.

And the mercury was already rising.

Harriet had a lot to take care of before the heat, both literal and metaphorical, got to be too much. For starters, there was Kade Noelstra. She needed him here, and she needed him here now. There wasn’t a better person to shove in front of the people of Phoenix. The tournament winner, portal clearer, and now, the man who’d killed the S-Rank monster leading the assault, and done it a full rank early? He’d be a perfect symbol of Phoenix’s indomitable spirit.

But he’d vanished. The guild leaders refused to report his location. Angelo had given her the best offer of the three S-Rank guildmasters: twenty-four hours, then limited information.

That wasn’t good enough. She needed Kade in front of a camera, smiling and waving. And Angelo was almost certainly planning to go against the Inner Council’s wishes, break confidentiality, and give Kade even more power.

She sent an angry message as Representative Unger took off his headset, pushed his chair back from his desk, and walked away. Then she pushed Kade Noelstra out of her mind and focused on the second problem.

The monsters had just given up.

That didn’t happen. Portal monsters were driven by the urge to kill, and to keep killing until there was nothing left to kill. It was extremely rare for them to stop. She had to figure out what had caused that, because while on the surface, it was the destruction of the S-Rank monster in charge, that didn’t make sense. It hadn’t been a Paragon, and according to Bernard the Wall, it hadn’t even been active until the moment Kade went to fight it.

The timing had to be coincidental.

Something else had happened, and she didn’t know what. Harriet Myers didn’t like not knowing. She made a pair of phone calls to a few trusted members of the Outer Council; they’d get their people looking into it.

Then there was the final problem.

The Governing Council had been attacked. The attack had been two-pronged, with a main thrust toward the vaults and a second, more precise force that had gone mostly unopposed. It had hit a single floor of the GC tower, slicing a single room out perfectly, as if a square of lasers had removed it. The room was a high-security, portal metal-lined power-reduction cell. It had a single prisoner in it—Deborah Callahan, the secret S-Ranker. She’d been in prison for the attempted murder of multiple delvers, for cheating at the Fallen Delvers Tournament, and for destabilizing Phoenix’s defenses at a crucial moment.

And now she was gone. Councilwoman Harriet Myers shut her eyes against the glow of the computer screen. Then she reached out and shut it off. It was time to get back to her real office, where she’d have a chance of solving any of these problems.

◄▼►

I stood in a reinforced, hermetically-sealed conference room in the Roadrunners’ guild hall.

According to the Roadrunner who’d brought me here, it had been built specifically for situations like this. In a way, that was terrifying.

On the other hand, the view was fantastic. Glass walls covered three sides of the room, which jutted out from the side of Acme Tower. We were suspended over the city below, and in the distance, I could make out Estrella Mountain and the Skyline Mountain Park. The sun was beating down on the black asphalt and blacker rock, and even though the cloud of steam had vanished, there was still plenty of it melting off of Phoenix.

There were two other people in the room with me, but neither of them had said anything so far, and I was fine with that. I had a lot to think about.

I’d posted up next to the windows, looking out over the desert. The other two occupied the other half of the room. Angelo Lawrence, the Light of Dawn, sat slumped in a chair. Black bags hung below his eyes, and his skin was cracked; pus oozed from the cracks in a disgusting, orange color. And, behind him, Sarah Cullman, the Spark of Life, worked her healing magic.

Without Angelo, we wouldn’t have survived the siege, but I didn’t have any energy left to worry about him. Ellen had pushed herself to the same limit I had in Carlsbad. She’d probably stepped back before the plunge, but I was still worried about her. We’d promised we’d be with each other for the long haul, and then I’d put her in a position where she had to sacrifice herself in the name of victory.

That I’d done it in the past didn’t matter. I’d put her in this situation, and I needed to fix it. I needed to talk to Eugene. I’d done what he needed me to do here—or at least, I thought I had. He owed me, and Ellen was how he’d settle that debt.

And as for Jeff? He hadn’t used his core yet, and I’d sent a message asking him to hold off until I knew more about what it’d do to him. The last thing I needed was a second friend destroying themselves in the name of power—especially when it wasn’t necessary.

“Before Angelo starts filling up the silence, your girlfriend’s fine,” Sarah said. “Her core’s cracked, but it’s not broken. She needs time off, though. That’s the only fix.”

I turned and stared at her. One eyebrow raised.

Angelo cleared his throat. “Sarah, I think you are mistaken.”

“That’s the only fix we can replicate,” she amended. “I sent her back to your guild building. She’ll be looked after there. Your other friends are there too, and so is your sister. She didn’t talk much when I called to let her know what you’d done—all she said was, ‘Yeah, sure. The one time I do something big, and Kade steals my moment.’ She said you’d know what that meant.”

A snort escaped before I could stop it. “I do, and we’re going to have a talk later.”

Sarah nodded. “Alright, I don’t need to know. It’s guild business, and that’s not my business. Angelo, take it away.”

“Thank you, Sarah. And thank you for working on me so diligently.” Angelo tried to smile. Orange fluid escaped from a cracked lip, and he winced. His head slowly pivoted toward me. “Kade Noelstra, I had a similar conversation to this one with another delver, some months ago. She had just done something indescribably foolish, and I felt the need to correct her course.”

He coughed. I stared at him. The Light of Dawn and Depth of Midnight was the strongest delver in Phoenix. He was always immaculate. Always put together. But now, he sat in a bathrobe, half his thin, pale chest naked and exposed, with weakness written across his face. “Are you sure you’re up for this conversation?”

“He is,” Sarah said before Angelo could open his mouth. “Kade, this talk is bigger than the guilds, the S-Rankers, or Phoenix. We talked briefly, and both of us agree that it has to happen.”

“And it has to happen now,” Angelo said. He coughed again, and Sarah went back to healing him. “The price of power, Kade, is very clear. There are bottlenecks to pass. The C-Rank one is the first. It comes down to two choices of determination. Is the delver ready to commit to being the best, and when they realize how difficult the path is, will they keep walking it?’ You have answered both questions.

“Then, there is the second set of questions. Once you are beyond the limits of humanity, like the comic book heroes children read about, what will you do then? The time for pettiness is over. Your grudges mean nothing to the people of Phoenix or to your allies. All they mean to those who must clean up after you is more of a mess.” He convulsed as racking coughs reopened the healing cracks and burns on his body. The pus smelled like death and made my teeth itch, and I was glad Sarah was in the room to help mitigate the sheer radiation pushing out of his body.

“What are you trying to say, Angelo?” I asked.

He laughed bitterly. “Angelo, eh? I suppose you have earned that. Kade, you have been asked a question. ‘When your power becomes something others rely on, will you help them stand?’ The next step in your journey is S-Rank, and we keep our ranks small for a reason.”

“Deborah’s your reason,” I said.

He nodded, smiling somewhat less widely to avoid reopening wounds Sarah had just healed. “Precisely. We—that is, the other S-Rankers in Phoenix and I—had decided not to allow her to hit S-Rank. We believed it would be dangerous for the city as a whole. With you, the verdict is out, but I suspect you already have a path to that power. We likely cannot stop you from joining our ranks without killing you.”

I stiffened. Lightning welled up inside of me. If he wanted to end me, he’d find more of a fight than he wanted.

Angelo laughed again. “Relax. There was one member of the Inner Council who, after you found a way to repair your core, believed you should be eliminated. He was voted down. You represent too much value to the city to throw away—and that is before your recent victories.”

“Value, huh?” I asked.

“Yes. Value. The city needs you. But more than that, Kade Noelstra, I would personally be happy to have you join us as an S-Ranker. As a token of this support, I will direct the Roadrunners’ archivist to deliver the material needed to understand the A-Rank bottleneck and how to overcome it. It will not be an answer. But it will provide them if you’re clever. Expect them within a week.”

“I’d appreciate that.” I walked over and stuck out a hand, then shook Angelo Lawrence’s and Sarah Cullman’s. Then I left, heading for the waiting, AI-driven car waiting for me outside.

The Light of Dawn had his path to power, and it’d be enlightening to understand how the S-Rankers had done it in the past, but I had a feeling the God of Thunder already had plans for me. It would give me a possible way forward without him, though. The real value was in learning exactly what Angelo thought of me; the fact that he was willing to hand me the guidebook to becoming his equal meant that the Light of Dawn already thought I’d answered those questions.

But he was wrong.

I hadn’t fought to save Phoenix. My responsibility wasn’t to the city at all—just to a few of the people in it.

I’d fought for three reasons. Three promises. That I’d be with Ellen for the long haul. That I’d take care of Jessie. And that I’d make Dad proud. Those had been my reasons all the way from E-Rank to a single step from the pinnacle of power on Earth. They’d carried me this far, and they’d keep carrying me as far as I could go.

My clothes were too hot. The moment I stepped outside, I started sweating, and I didn’t stop until I hit the cooled driver’s seat and buckled my seatbelt. Deimos pulled onto the highway, and we accelerated. The roads were completely clear, and it only took a few minutes—moving far too quickly for safety under normal circumstances—to reach Surprise.

◄▼►

Deborah Callahan stood in a bubble in the middle of a vast ocean. She didn’t know where she was, but she did know one thing.

This wasn’t Earth.

She still wore her prison clothes, and as she stared at the black, watery tendrils lined with yellow eyes, it didn’t seem like her situation had changed much at all. The Placid King’s body roiled around her bubble, anger and a false calm fighting with one another.

That anger, for the first time since the day she met Angelo Lawrence, scared Deborah.

It was something she couldn’t fight. She’d never encountered something she wasn’t strong enough to fight, or at least see herself getting strong enough to challenge. Her own anger—the bitter, arrogant anger of a person who truly believed she was stronger and more deserving than everyone she met, quailed against the restrained fury coming off the Placid King in literal waves.

“Do you know the purpose of this failed siege, Deborah?”

She didn’t say anything. Her anger might have faltered, but it wasn’t gone.

“Speak.”

The Placid King’s aura lashed out. She tried to resist it, but felt her anger folding in on itself, replaced with an almost supernatural calm. She knew, in her mind, that she should be even more furious at the intervention, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but relaxed. “The purpose of the siege was to remove Kade Noelstra from the God of Thunder’s service, capture the stockpile of low-rank Paragon cores in the Governing Council’s vault, and put your other rivals on their back feet.”

“And do you know how many of those objectives we were able to complete?”

“None.”

“Elaborate for me.”

“Kade Noelstra is still alive and still working with the Thunder God. A ‘heroic’ last stand by a group of C and B-Rankers kept the Craftsman’s legions from recovering the cores, and—“

“Enough. You understand, then. Your failure to disrupt Phoenix’s little tournament or destroy Kade Noelstra has cost me decades of time and resources.” The Placid King’s watery tendrils wrapped around the bubble, obscuring Deborah’s view as they pushed their eyes into its edge to stare at her. “However, Deborah Callahan, those failures are not the end of your service to me.

“I have been thwarted in this battle. While I regroup and reconsolidate, you will be the instrument of my revenge. Go to the Craftsman. He will assist you in bettering yourself. Be strong, Deborah, and if you succeed in exacting my vengeance, yours may yet follow.”

Deborah nodded. “I will.” As the bubble drew her inexorably toward a shimmering golden portal, she braced herself. The Craftsman had just had his nose bloodied by Kade Noelstra, Angelo Lawrence, and the rest of Phoenix’s defenders. She’d helped bring that about in the early days. He wasn’t a Paragon, but he was S-Rank—and her initial encounter with him would be messy. But once they came to an agreement, whether by sword or by word, she was sure he’d be a useful ally.

The enemy of her enemies was her friend, after all.