Stormblade 4 C59: Stormstrike (3)

59 - Stormstrike (3)

The Placid King’s tentacle, the blade-and-cannon bulk of the Craftsman’s throne-tank, and I collided in the center of the room. Lightning crashed. Silk and brass exploded outward. The room’s lights flickered and went out, throwing us into strobing darkness.

The Storm’s Blade cut through that darkness. 

Laminar Blade and Stormfall. Blades of water ripped through brass armor and blue hex-shields. Shockwaves shredded chunks of smoking, stinking flesh from the massive Paragon’s limb. Slipstream instantly replicated my blows, spreading the armor-slicing, muscle-severing damage across everything near me. Lightning rippled out. And when it stopped, I wasn’t even close to done.

There was Mana here. Lots of Mana.

Stormbreak was nowhere near as powerful as the rest of my kit—not anymore—but it was strong enough for this. I used it. Flowers of lightning bloomed. I excluded only Cheddar from its power. A moment later, lightning pulsed seven times, rippling pure fury across the battlefield.

I bathed it in. It was the first real emotion I’d felt since the fight started, and with it, a flood of others poured in. Rage, anger, and fury—all for the Craftsman and the Placid King. They’d forced me to this end. They’d attacked my city, threatened my people. Their compulsion to kill, kill, and keep killing until there was nothing left to kill. They’d started this.

As Stormbreak surged, I kept pressing with the Storm’s Blade. Stormfall kept rolling. My attacks cut shallow grooves into the sheer bulk of the Placid King’s tentacle. It rolled and thrashed as the shock waves ripped those wounds deeper with every blow. Rancid-smelling, clear blood poured from them to mix with the ankle-deep water filling the Craftsman’s sanctum.

And as for the Craftsman…he wasn’t going down without a fight. Brass slugs the size of my hand erupted from his cannons. He seemed to be firing almost at random; the shells ricocheted off walls, ceiling, and floor. More hit the Placid King than hit me, and most of the ones coming my way were easy prey for Torrentborne stance. I shifted to it, burned a Lightning Charge for Lightning Dance, and started shifting and slicing.

My every blow raining down on the Craftsman was met by a handful of blades or a hex shield that flashed into existence just long enough to block my attacks. For a half-built, malformed cyborg, the portal’s boss was strong, tough, and more than capable of handling himself.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he growled through brass teeth, voice surprisingly human beneath the golden-colored mask.

“I don’t care,” I said. For a moment, that sense of enforced calm washed over me. I gritted my teeth and pushed against it, redoubled my attack, and kept on pressing. And behind me, the Placid King’s tendril raised high overhead.

◄▼►

The Placid King lay perfectly still in the darkness.

He wasn’t angry. Not even disappointed. Perhaps a skilled mental mage could have detected the barest hint of regret, but that was it. The massive Paragon had no room for emotions. Not even as he watched his plans unravel.

The regret was for the failed plan. But there was no anger, no rage—not at the maniac who’d foiled them, though he didn’t know it yet, nor at the Stormblade’s master.

The Unbroken Storm didn’t suit this child. Not at all. The Stormblade was closer to the reality he was witnessing.

Pain, like that a stinging insect would inflict on a man, rippled up from the burnt, shredded tentacle. The Placid King ignored it and continued his fight—not because he had to win, but because he needed to not lose. Whatever the Stormblade had done while he was out of the Placid King’s sight, it had seriously disrupted the balance of power, and a single limb wouldn’t be enough to achieve victory anymore.

The resource expenditure was likely too much to justify. He could still feasibly set the God of Thunder back, but at this point, it wouldn’t be worthwhile. He’d already lost too much, and while it hurt to admit it, it was time to cut his losses and move on. Even with this loss, he was still well ahead of the lightning dragon on his quest for ascension.

On the other hand…one more attack wouldn’t hurt. If he timed it right, he would either win or deny his enemies valuable resources.

Or both. Both was good.

◄▼►

As I pressed my attack against the Craftsman, swords and blades clashing, lightning surged through my veins. It was his fault. He had asked for this—if not from me, then from the Placid King. The SS-Plus-Ranked Paragon’s power had enabled the portal boss to break the stalemate in the caverns and surge toward Phoenix. He’d received that power with the intent of killing my friends. Of killing Jeff and Ellen.

Of killing Jessie.

The tide of calm crashed over me. I pushed back with my rage and with all the strength of the Stormkin Avatar and my Negative Space aura. Most of the emotion faded. But not all of it. And as soon as the Placid King let up even a little, that spark ignited my core again.

I wasn’t just angry. I hated both of them. They’d threatened my people, and that was enough for hatred. Both of these enemies had to die, and the Stormblade Path was my tool to make it happen.

I pushed myself even harder. Stormrunner. Lightning Dance. A stance shift to Cyclone Forms for an abortive, one-Charge Thunderhead/Storm Sigil combo. The lightning beam cut across the tentacle and severed one of the Craftsman’s arms.

Back and forth, the battle raged. The room was dented and pulverized, and the only light was from the Craftsman’s cannon flashes and the bolts of lightning carving their way through the pitch-black, humid air. The two of us traded blows back and forth, sword and spell matching blades and cannons—and then some. I was winning. The Craftsman was going to die.

But before I could land the final blow, a looming shadow filled the space behind me. The burnt, bleeding tentacle of the Placid King raised up to slam down.

Windfall.

I fired a single Lightning Chain at the Craftsman as he fled, even as my feet pushed off the water-covered brass floor. It connected. The Craftsman froze, trapped. The tentacle slammed down, shaking the floor and popping weld lines between it and the walls. I threw myself to the side; a massive wave caught me and slammed me into the walls, and I rolled to my feet, the Storm’s Blade out and ready to continue the fight.

“Well played, Paragon of a new Path,” the Placid King said as he dragged the portal’s boss through the ever-rising water. “Tell your master that—“

“No. I won’t be telling him anything. I no longer serve the God of Thunder!” I said. Lightning formed in my hand, and I unleashed an uncomboed Hand of the Thunder God at the retreating tentacle. The damage was already catastrophic, but the monster barely reacted as even more flesh sloughed off and the entire thing spasmed.

“Then my war is won. If you should see him, tell him I send my regards. And one more thing, Stormblade: Welcome to the game of ascension. For most, it is a short one. I will be back for you soon, Kade Noelstra.”

“I’ll be seeing you soon. But you’re taking something of mine!” I said. Torrentborne stance. Stormrunner. I dashed forward. The Storm’s Blade sliced through flesh. Through brass and silk. The Craftsman’s body disconnected from his metal chair and fell to the soaking wet floor, and I leaned onto it. My sword punched through the S-Ranked boss’s chest. Blood erupted from the wound.

Portal Collapse In: 59:58

And, as the Placid King’s severed tentacle tip thrashed in the water, the Carlsbad Portal began to collapse, and I turned and fled, the Craftsman’s core in hand.

◄▼►

The survivors were just around the corner.

Sarah looked like she was on death’s door, but every time she got enough Mana to heal, she’d clearly used it on the others. Hugo Martinez was almost standing, and Terrel had his hammer in hand—though the shaft was bent and broken. Nathan was still down, and Sarah was working on him when I rounded the bend and let the adrenaline I’d been powering myself on for the last several hours falter.

It was like a physical weight. I’d won. The Craftsman was dead. What every S-Ranker—every council member and official—in Phoenix, the Texas Cities, and the West Coast believed was the biggest threat to humanity in North America would close in under one hour. I’d won. But there was still so much to do.

“Is it over?” Sarah asked as I dropped to a knee, breathing hard and noticing the dozens of wounds I’d taken for the first time. Shells had ripped my armor to shreds and pulped muscle and bone below it. Blades had cut deep into my body and left shallow grooves in other places. The Craftsman’s minions had pushed me hard, too; I had injuries from them, and from Quellat. The pain washed over me, but it wasn’t distracting. If anything, it was grounding to let the Stamina stop hiding how much I’d been hurt.

“Yes. He’s dead,” I said.

The Portal Tyrant nodded slowly. His hammer hit the ground with a splash and a clatter, and he walked into the room I’d just left. I started to follow.

“Stop.” He turned, eyes hard. “You’ve done enough. Let me do this.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Sarah’s gaze was locked on mine, too, and her head moved the tiniest fraction of an inch back and forth. After a moment, I nodded. “All you, then.”

“What happened?” Hugo Martinez, the Falcon’s Eye, asked. He had a knife in his hand; his bow had broken during their fight against Craftsman and King.

That was a good question. I’d fought monsters two ranks higher than mine before. In fact, I’d been doing it ever since the C-Rank portal, just after I’d finished my initial build but before I hit D-Rank. But there was a big difference between being part of a team of E and D-Rankers working slowly through a C-Rank portal and…what I’d done. Quellat—and S-Ranked Paragon—was dead. No one had helped me kill him. So was the final boss of the Black Tower, killed before I’d even hit S-Rank, albeit with help.

And then there was the Craftsman and the tendril of the Placid King.

No S-Ranker had even pushed into the Craftsman’s realm before us. The other S-Rankers in the assault team had only managed to reach his room before losing to the boss and SS-Plus-Ranked monster’s combined power. Was there truly such a large gap between the Paragon Core method for reaching S-Rank and the Law-Forging method that I could accomplish what that many S-Rankers couldn’t?

From the look the Falcon’s Eye was giving me, it was likely.

Sarah stood from Nathan Anders’s side and motioned for me to follow her down the flight of stairs I’d rocketed up only a few minutes before. I did, and she turned when we reached the next landing down. “Kade Noelstra, are you ready for what’s coming once we leave the caverns? We can cover for you for a while, but it’s going to get out that you killed the Craftsman yourself. All of Phoenix’s eyes are going to be on you. Maybe even all of Earth’s, for a while. This is the kind of thing that catapults you to the highest tiers of—“

I held up a hand, and to my surprise, she cut herself off almost instantly. “Sarah, I’ve got much, much larger problems than the guilds or the Governing Council. They’re going to have to deal with my sister and the Desert Wing Guild, because my focus is on the real threat now. The Placid King and the God of Thunder. The SS-Plus-Ranked Paragons. If they decide to come after me on Earth, the world will die. There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that.”

“And what do we do to stop that from happening?” Sarah asked. “There has to be a way.”

“There is,” I said. “But to do it, I have to get even stronger. I have to get strong enough to beat not only a portion of the Placid King, but him altogether. And then I have to do the same for the God of Thunder.”

I lowered my voice and explained to her exactly what the Placid King had said to me in the moments before the portal began collapsing. The whole thing, about being part of the game of ascension now, and about my method of reaching S-Rank and the power it—apparently—offered me on top of what most other S-Rankers had. Then I told her everything I knew about that.

“Why are you telling me this and not the others?” Sarah asked.

I shrugged. “Because if they knew about it, they’d try to take that power for themselves. You’re different.”

“No one reaches S-Rank without being power-hungry.”

“That’s true. But you’ve never used your power to accumulate more. You have different goals than anyone else in Phoenix, with the exception of a few lower-ranked healers I know. You’re the safest person I could tell all of this to, and the next people I talk to are going to be much more dangerous.”

The timer ticked down for a minute before the Spark of Life nodded slowly. “You want allies.”

“I do. I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do even with help, but I have to get stronger somehow. And that means getting help from whoever I can, before the strongest beings in the universe hunt me down.”