Stormblade 4 C35: Spark

35 - Spark

The Governing Council had repaired the Roswell radio tower. It was a slapdash, messy job, but it was operational, and it was also the rallying point for Angelo Lawrence’s forces. The GC’s ‘army’ of Bs, As, and almost every S-Ranker in the city was there, along with a force of A and S-Rankers from the West Coast cities. All five guilds were represented, but Angelo was in charge.

He was done being patient. He was done losing to this portal.

The Carlsbad Portal Break had been a thorn in his side—in the entire region’s side—for years. It had been a dagger pointed at the heart of Phoenix or the Texas Cities since it first broke, and ever since the portal surge, that dagger had turned into a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. They’d tried containment. They’d tried siege. They’d even tried all-out assault. Nothing had worked.

But this time, Angelo Lawrence was sure things would be different. How could they not be? Almost two dozen S-Rankers were assembled here, with eight more positioned to the east of Carlsbad Fortress. The firepower the Governing Council had assembled would be enough. It had to be.

He stood at the base of the radio tower, across from a car dealership and a store stuffed full of sun-rotten alien merchandise, and watched as a helicopter flew across the horizon before setting down next to the tower.

“Things will be different this time,” he said to himself. It was almost a mantra at this point.

The helicopter’s door opened, and six delvers stepped out. He’d worked directly with all six, but in very different capacities. And none of them would be with him today.

That was fine. He had the easier job. All he’d have to do was be loud, obvious, and, once that was done, patient. And if he did it right, the others would do the rest for him.

◄▼►

I wasn’t one hundred percent.

But I hadn’t been in six days. The Solo Portal had taken a physical toll, one that Sarah could smooth over but not erase. It was brutal, painful, and vicious. My body had little aches that flared up when I moved. But I had a few hours to let my skills slowly work on repairing them, and that’d be enough.

I stepped out of the helicopter, feeling underdressed. The rest of my teammates were armored, carried their weapons—and back-ups—and almost reeked of portal gear. In contrast, I wore jeans and a thin hoodie. No gear. No weapons. Only a single core in my pocket—the keystone. Everything else I needed was inside the Stormsteel core within me.

“We are all here. Let us begin,” Angelo said. He shook our hands quickly, turned on a heel, and walked briskly toward a tent in the open space near the radio tower. Ridiculously, he wore his standard suit: linen, a light tan, with no tie. The six days without fighting had been good for him. His face was shaved, and his body had recovered from the radiation he’d exposed himself to in defending Phoenix. He looked ready for war.

So did the other four delvers in the tent.

“Strike team, these are Martin Mendoza and Francine Williams of the Texas delegation, and Travis Fall and Davis King from the West Coast. They’re here to represent their respective forces as we run through our plan.” Councilwoman Myers pointed to us. “This is the Governing Council strike force. We picked the six of them specifically because they have the best combination of skills to do what must be done.”

“The A-Ranker too?” Davis King rumbled. He was a big man, but to my surprise, the only weapons he carried were two sets of claws that fit over his fingers.

“Kade Noelstra, the Unbroken Storm,” Angelo said. “He beat out every other A-Ranker and below in a tournament, then cleared a portal during the siege, returning with weapons that we used to break it. He’s capable of holding his own, even with the S-Rankers.”

“Fine.” Davis sat in a folding chair. It groaned ominously under his bulk. “Let’s get started.”

“The plan is simple,” Councilwoman Myers said once everyone was seated. “The Texas force will sweep in from the east while the West Coasters do the same from the west, linking up and blocking the portal’s path to Carlsbad Fortress. At the same time, the Phoenix contingent will move into the Fortress itself and begin reclaiming it. Once we’ve entered and pulled the monsters inside to the north, your teams will enter the Fortress from the south. We’ll take the city quickly, then, once we have a defensive position backing up, begin marching on Carlsbad Caverns.”

“And this is all a diversion?” Francine Williams asked.

Myers nodded. “That’s correct. The goal of this operation is to draw the Carlsbad Portal into a conflict outside of the caverns. We do not want to enter the caves, but we want the portal to think we’re trying to get inside. Once we start our feint, the strike team will land above the caverns, enter them through the elevator shaft, and attempt to enter the portal itself. If successful, they’ll move quickly to destroy the portal’s boss, which will free our forces to mop up the monsters outside.”

Angelo Lawrence cleared his throat. “It is a bold plan. However, we cannot settle for a return to the status quo. The Carlsbad portal break has been a threat for a long time. A small force infiltrating the portal may succeed where siege, assault, and containment have failed.”

I nodded. It was a bold plan. But Angelo was right. We needed to change the way this war was fought. I’d gotten lucky not to lose more people during the siege, and we wouldn’t have a Fallen Delvers portal to bail us out if it happened again. The time for victory was now.

◄▼►

There were a lot more moving parts to this operation than there’d been to the relief convoy.

Luckily, none of us had any specific tasks other than making sure we were ready. That gave me plenty of time to watch the chaos.

Councilwoman Myers and the Light of Dawn seemed to be doing more people management than planning. The Texas and West Coast people both had concerns about the strategy, but neither delegation had raised them during the briefing meeting. By the time she pulled herself away from them and made a beeline straight for Nathan Anders and me, she looked exhausted.

“It hasn’t even kicked off yet, Harriet,” the Phoenix Reborn said. He leaned against the side of the helicopter, hands behind his head. “Take a breather. It’ll be worse once things are actually moving.”

“Zip it,” she snapped. Her scowl slipped a moment later. “How’s your son?”

“Pissed off,” Nathan said. “He didn’t get to go with the convoy mission, and Angelo wouldn’t let him come along on this one, either. I understand. We don’t need unawakened support on this one. But that doesn’t mean he’s not pissed off to be stuck at Roadrunner HQ.”

I blinked. “You have a son?”

“Yep. He’s twenty-five. Works for the Roadrunners as their quartermaster. I didn’t come out of retirement for Phoenix,” Nathan said. “I came back because he’s got kids now, too. Twin girls, three years old. Phoenix could go to hell as long as they grew up happy.”

Myers shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand that, personally. But if that’s what got you back on the line and out of my hair, I can accept it.”

I closed my eyes as the two council members talked. Jessie and Ellen. Those were the people I was fighting for. I wasn’t that much different from Nathan Anders, really. And chances were that, if I tracked them down, Sarah Cullman, Bernard the Wall, and the Portal Tyrant also had people—or at least reasons.

But I didn’t move. Instead, I leaned back against the helicopter. The core skills in my build were closing in on their caps, and Shadowstorm Battery was ready to push to the next rank. Learning the next Law in the Law of the Shadowed Storm and Law of the Stormlight wouldn’t help me hit S-Rank, but at this point, I was out of other options to gain power.

So, as Myers and Anders talked about his grandkids and her marriage to her job, I closed my eyes and let myself drift away into my mental space.

Cheddar joined me.

I hadn’t made a secret of him with the S-Rankers. There hadn’t been any point; I’d brought him with me in my counterattack across Mesa, and if anyone hadn’t known about him, they did now. But for the helicopter ride and the meeting with the other cities’ delegations, I’d held him back.

The winged snake looked odd—almost like there was an echo of himself, hanging loosely from his wings and body. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. He was in the process of shedding his skin. As he flew awkwardly through the air around the shattered, lightning-pitted remnant of my mountain, bits of skin broke away in the rushing wind around us.

I focused on the sky.

The clouds were dark. The sky was moonless and starless. In the far, far distance, the glow of Phoenix shone against the pitch-black night. Aside from that, it was almost oppressive. I could only make out Cheddar’s shape from his own glow against the darkness as he squirmed in the air and flung discarded skin down to the desert floor below.

Then lightning ripped across the sky for an instant. The desert floor below lit up, a snapshot of the expanse around me. For that fraction of a second, the desert floor looked frozen, highlighted in pale light and shadows that extended for what felt like miles by the bolt of lightning. The afterimages faded from my eyes in less than the time it had taken to burn them into my vision, and the desert blackened again like a blanket of darkness.

I waited.

Cheddar struggled in the air.

Another bolt lit up the night, turning the desert into a brand new diorama. Then another. Bolts started coming in faster and faster, until it felt like I was sitting in front of a strobe light. But after every pulse of light, the desert returned to darkness. The shadow, not the storm, was the default state of the desert.

As I worked that thought over in my mind, realizing that while it was a revelation, it wasn’t the right one, Cheddar pulled his cloud-wing free from the shed skin. The silvery edge around the shadow cloud shone in the flashing lightning, but just like the bright flashes of light, it returned to darkness as soon as the light left.

I stared at the desert, watching as Cheddar’s serpentine body descended toward a dry arroyo. A flash of lightning illuminated him and threw a massive shadow across the desert. It looked almost demonic, with Cheddar’s wings and diamond-shaped head spread across the ground in black against the stark white light.

And that’s when I saw it.

The shadow stretched as far as it could, but it needed the light to do it. The blackness around me wasn’t shadow. It was blackness. But every lightning bolt cast shadow not just from Cheddar, or my mountain, but from every rock, every grain of sand, every blade of grass. The shadow from every flash was infinite.

Law Learned: Third Law of the Stormlight
Stormlight Bond: Rank B to A

In the darkest of nights, the storm breaks through the blackness. Lightning casts pale light across the sky, its brightness a single strobe pulse. But even that temporary, blinding light cannot overcome the shadow. This is the truth of the Stormlight. By accepting the inevitability of both storm and shadow, you have taken a step from the Stormsteel Path: a flash of light casts infinite shadow.

Your familiar grows in strength.

When I opened my eyes, both Nathan and Myers were staring at me. “Think that’ll help?” the Phoenix Reborn asked.

I shrugged. “It’s an increase in power. It’s not part of my core skills, and it won’t help me hit S-Rank. But yes, it’ll probably help.”

“Good. We’re going to need it,” Councilwoman Myers said quietly. “The mission’s kicking off now. Get ready.”

◄▼►

The God of Thunder was a good host.

When the Crone wanted to visit, he made sure he had a clear schedule for her. After all, they weren’t friends, but they were, at least temporarily, allied powers. He’d cleared out a space in his portal world for her. But even his hospitality had limits, and while the bent old woman was bound to her humanoid form in his domain, he was not.

“This should be entertaining,” he said, floating high above the flat surface the Crone stood on.

She snorted. “I haven’t watched such a messy attempt on an S-Rank portal in a long, long time, Eugene. This was the best plan they could come up with?”

The God of Thunder laughed quietly. Thunder echoed across his portal world as he did. “This world is shockingly behind the curve. Hints at progressing through the upper Ranks were ignored or misinterpreted, and they’ve allowed major threats to exist on the world’s surface for far too long. There’s a monster to the south that’s claimed an area larger than most kingdoms as its own, just because it’s a Paragon. If someone had done that to my home world…”

“Yes, yes. But this isn’t even a Paragon. What’s so special about the Craftsman? He’s nothing but an S-Rank monster. No special core. No Path. Why are they struggling with this?”

Eugene didn’t have an answer. He focused on Kade as the kid climbed into the flying machine again. He’d pushed himself as hard as anyone could have expected. And he was close. The God of Thunder was ready to help him reach S-Rank as soon as he was ready. After that? Their relationship would change dramatically. He’d do what he owed the kid, of course. The shadow mage would recover and come out of it stronger. But beyond A-Rank, the dragon and the spellblade would cease behind mentor and pupil and start to become rivals—or, more likely, predator and prey.

In a way, the God of Thunder was disappointed by that. “They grow up so fast,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that?”

“Nothing

The Crone stared at him for a moment, eyebrow raised dramatically. Then she leaned on her cane again and grinned. “I think their plan has potential. Unfortunately for them, the Placid King has given the Craftsman a new toy to break. But this should still be entertaining.”

The God of Thunder didn’t laugh this time. He focused his attention on Kade instead. The kid was strong. He’d done everything he could to set himself up for success. And Eugene had given him what he could. Whatever the Craftsman had gotten from the Placid King, Eugene was confident that Kade could handle it.