Stormblade 5 C2: Pack Bonding (10)
2 - Pack Bonding (10)
When the portal to the Black Tower opened in the Desert Wind Guild’s penthouse, Ellen Traynor was ready.
Entering a portal—especially an S-Ranked one—was undoubtedly a bad idea for the A-Ranker. Her core was still cracked. Not broken, but breaking. Forcing her body and core to use her skills in a fight was asking for trouble, and just because Kade Noelstra had survived his own core break didn’t mean she’d be so lucky. And Kade had told them very specifically not to follow him into his Solo Portal, even if they were able to.
He’d been doubly specific about Ellen and his sister, Jessie, not joining him. But Ellen didn’t care. Kade was hiding from her. There was only one reason he could possibly be hiding from her this adamantly, and it was because he’d failed. He’d promised her that he was with her for the long haul, but he hadn’t been able to find a suitable core.
And worse, the God of Thunder wasn’t going to help them.
That left Ellen facing a long, slow recovery while her progression partner, boyfriend, and favorite idiot was forced into gaining more and more power, expanding the gulf between them even more just to stay alive. She didn’t blame Kade. But she did still need his help to keep that gulf from widening too far.
So, into the portal Ellen Traynor went, battle gear on and spells at the ready. And inside, she found chaos. Dozens—no, hundreds—of lightning rods aimed up at a dark, cloud-filled sky. The familiar bricks of a Dark Citadel world shifted under her feet as the world itself slowly re-formed from a walled city into something new. The sheer volume of electricity in the air put her hair on end. The entire world felt like a mad scientist’s twisted experiment: How much electricity can exist in one space?
And through it, Ellen Traynor sensed two familiar forces.
The first was Kade.
And the second…the second was something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Not since she’d Mana Burned herself almost to death in a futile attempt to shoulder the burden of fighting Queen Mother Yalerox. It was a shadow of the storm she’d summoned, but it was there.
The portal world she’d found herself in wasn’t the only thing under Kade Noelstra’s command. Even the storm overhead served his purposes.
She hurried to the central tower, robe and long pigtails flapping in the howling wind, and ascended the four flights of stairs to the top. That was where Kade would be. He’d always been there, at the summit of the mountain. This wouldn’t be any different. As she climbed, Ellen’s sense of danger increased. The pressure from Kade’s aura did, too. It wasn’t fear or a wall of force. It was more the potential for sudden electrical energy.
But none of that mattered. The traps she bypassed didn’t matter. Neither did the electricity pouring up the Black Tower’s birdcage-like exterior to surge back into the cloud overhead.
Kade was here. And Ellen needed to talk to him.
◄▼►
I stared out at the edges of my portal world.
Not a monster’s. Not another Paragon’s. Mine. The Black Tower belonged to me now. I’d claimed it when I’d ascended to S-Rank and founded my own Path, separate from the Stormsteel Path the God of Thunder had allowed me to deviate from. Its spiderweb of portal metal and hundreds of lightning rods were mine to command. So were the streets, the roads. I could shape them into whatever I needed them to be. The world bent to my will easily.
Not that it was a fast process. It would take days to create the structure I needed—days I probably didn’t have. But if I focused on it and truly put my mind to it, I had a chance of forging a weapon to resist the God of Thunder with.
It was my best bet. I couldn’t reach SS-Rank—the minimum I’d need to challenge him directly—in three days. And I couldn’t fight him on Earth. The world couldn’t handle his presence.
So, the Black Tower.
As I reshaped another batch of lightning rods and their connection with the Black Tower, a presence appeared in my world. I ignored it. There wasn’t time. Even as it scaled the stairwell and entered the fourth floor, I focused on the work at hand.
“What are you doing here, Kade?” Ellen asked from the doorway to my…throne room.
I took a deep breath as I tried to figure out my explanation. But before I could come up with one, she continued. “You don’t need to answer. You’re hiding from us. We haven’t seen you since you got back to the guild building. You went right in here and got to work on whatever it is you’re trying to do, and told us not to follow you. Why?
The question hung in the air. After another few moments, she climbed up to the throne and put a hand on my shoulder. I sighed and stopped reshaping the lightning rod arrays. “I’m not hiding. I’m just busy.”
“Bullshit, Kade.”
“I am. I’ve got a world to reconfigure, a god or two to kill, and your core problem to figure out—and it’s all got to be done in the next three days. I’m swamped.”
“That’s bullshit, too.”
I met Ellen’s eyes, but didn’t stand. “Which part?”
“You know which part.”
More silence. I closed my eyes, and Ellen’s hand disappeared from my shoulder. “Kade, the rest of it doesn’t matter, does it? This is really about my core.”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I stood up and walked to the massive windows, where sheets of rain and thunder pounded against the thick glass. The storm outside was massive—one of the largest I’d ever been in—but it wasn’t anywhere near strong enough. “If either the Placid King or the God of Thunder shows up on Earth, they’ll—“
“Kill the world. I know.” Ellen sat in my throne, and for a brief moment, my core shuddered, and the lightning outside stopped. Darkness surged across the Black Tower as our Dual Skill Progression core bond forced the world to waver.
Then it stopped. She cleared her throat. “Huh. Interesting. But you really don’t think either of those monsters will avoid attacking Earth to draw you out? Neither of them has any reason to leave our world alone, and I doubt you can give them one in three days.”
She was right, and I knew it. I couldn’t do anything about it except hope, though. “What do you suggest, then? And don’t even think about helping me with this. Your core can’t handle it.” The cores in my pocket weighed heavily as I asked the question. So close, and yet so far.
“Let’s focus on my core for now. I’m tired of not being able to help. Then, once we’ve got that taken care of, you and I can focus on the bigger problems. Small steps toward victory.”
“Fine.” I sat on the dias’s steps. Ellen joined me, sitting close enough to bump shoulders with me, and I pulled the two cores out. “This is what I’ve got.”
◄▼►
Ellen’s core problem was actually very simple to solve. In a world where multiple SS-Plus-Ranked Paragons weren’t trying to kill me, I’d just take a two or three-month vacation with her. By the time we finished, her core would heal naturally, and we’d be ready to push her to S-Rank. Easy.
But the other, faster method wouldn’t be anywhere near as simple.
“The God of Thunder actually did invite us into his world to fix your core,” I said as I carefully set the brass and ocean cores on the bricks in front of us. “If we had a viable core, I’d almost be tempted to try infiltrating his world and running the re-forging machine myself. I’ve been through it. Most of the difficult part is on the person with the broken core.”
“On me, you mean?” Ellen asked, grinning for the first time.
I smiled back sheepishly. Now that she’d gotten what she wanted out of me, Ellen was much less intense and much more relaxed. “Exactly. The problem is these cores. The Paragon core here is S-Ranked. If you had a water attunement, we’d be in business. But as it is…it’s basically useless. And then there’s the brass-and-silk core. It’s even less useful.”
“Agreed.” Ellen snorted. “I can see why I might think a core that could run Phoenix—the whole city—for six months might be useless. Money’s never been a big deal for me. But that’s a lot of money for you if we sold it to the Governing Council.”
“Useless,” I repeated. “Money’s only helpful if it helps me survive this so I can keep taking care of Jessie, or if it helps with your core problem. It doesn’t do either of those things right now.”
“Have you talked to Jessie? Oh, of course you haven’t. You went and hid in here the moment you got back.”
I winced. “True. I didn’t want to tell her everything here, and her problems are so small they might as well not—“
“You’re missing the bigger picture, Kade.”
“How?”
“Simple.” Ellen leaned into me and waved at the cores. “You’ve only got three days. That’s not enough time. You need allies, and you need ways to hurt the monsters coming after you. Jessie—and Phoenix as a whole—can provide that. That S-Rank core’s your ticket to making it happen. Besides, even if that wasn’t true, she’s your sister!”
“That’s why I can’t drag her into this mess,” I said as I put an arm around Ellen’s waist. She seemed a lot better than she had in the car, but even so, it was shocking how…weak…she felt.
“That’s why you have to let her help. If you don’t, she’ll never forgive you, and you can’t take care of her by shielding her from what’s going on. Besides, you’ve let her do more than anyone else would have. What’s different this time?”
“…Nothing.”
Nothing was different. I’d been putting myself in danger since that first trap portal, and Jessie had been working harder than any sixteen-year-old should have to since shortly after that. Ellen was right. The monsters coming after me were a threat to Jessie, and her, and to everyone else I knew. I needed to—
Before I could finish the thought, lightning crackled overhead. I stood. My arm left Ellen’s waist, and the Storm’s Blade appeared in my hand. She tensed and stood, too. “What is it, Kade?”
“We’ve got company,” I replied. The sword was already up in Thunderlord’s aggressive stance.
“Jessie?”
“No. This is a new portal. One that just opened. Ellen, I need you to stay here. This room’s the safest place in the entire portal world. You can’t—“
“Like hell I can’t, Kade Noelstra. I’ve been babying my core for weeks. It’s not in as bad a shape as you think it is. I can’t push too hard, but I’m nowhere near as damaged as you were when you pushed yours. I can fight.”
Ellen’s fierceness—and the sudden surge of her aura expanding—were both convincing, but it had only been a few hours since I’d held her in the GC parking lot, and she’d been so weak-feeling then. I shut my eyes. Every second we waited was a second the invading monsters gained a firmer foothold in my portal world. Of course, that would only be true until I finished the project I was working on. Then, nothing short of the Placid King or the God of Thunder would be able to force its way in. And in the immediate term, that’d only be true for these monsters until I got Ellen out of here.
I hoped.
In the meantime, I needed to get Ellen out of here safely, and I couldn’t do that if she was fighting me on this. “Fine. You can help, but be careful about your core, and we’re only in this together until we get you back to Earth. Let’s go.”
Her eyes narrowed even more, but she nodded, and I took off, heading for the stairs. The Black Tower wasn’t complete. Neither was the storm overhead. But the Placid King didn’t seem like he’d give me the time I needed to finish.
That was fine. I’d just take care of this myself.
◄▼►
Ellen wasn’t ready for this.
She knew it, even if she’d half-convinced herself. And Kade obviously knew it, too. Her core was still fragile. It hadn’t really begun recovering, and Kade’s push to S-Rank had destabilized it more than she was willing to admit out loud.
But at the same time…she couldn’t abandon Kade to this assault. He was S-Rank now, yes. He’d defeated the monster at the center of the Carlsbad Portal. But even so, he couldn’t go it alone. She’d just spent the last few minutes slowly convincing him of that, and she was damned if she was going to let that hard work go to waste.
So, as Kade jogged for the stairs to the next floor down, Ellen sprinted to keep up.
The first monster nearly froze her in place, though.
It was coming up the stairs as they started down. A fish-headed, multi-tentacled monstrosity twice the size of even someone like Jeff. Armored scales, greenish fluid leaking from its mouth, and slime trailing behind it. It seemed to struggle to breathe, and yet, at the same time, it moved faster than almost any monster Ellen had ever seen.
Spirit-Slither: S-Rank Monster
Her core was already strained. It had been strained for weeks. But she gritted her teeth. Power welled inside it as she tapped into her Mana for the first time since the Siege of Phoenix. At the same time, her willpower levered down on the core, the sheer weight of her need to help and her need to stay intact forcing it to stay together. She would help Kade. She would not let him abandon her.
The Spirit-Slither moved. An aura of calm crashed into hers. The shadowy wall of fear buckled under its pressure; the S-Ranked monster was impossibly strong, even for her.
But not for Kade.
He cut through the aura. Lightning crackled, and a peel of thunder shook Ellen’s very soul. His sword sliced through a tentacle; it thrashed on the ground, green blood spewing across the stairs. A second strike caught a fin. More blood. More power. The attacks rained in as Kade used a skill. Ellen could barely follow their speed, but every blow left a crater in the monster’s armored scales as thunder echoed up and down the stairwell.
He was fast. Impossibly fast. And impossibly strong. Was this what S-Rank looked like?
Ellen relaxed her soul. She was right; Kade couldn’t win against the enemies coming for him. Not alone.
But if this was the best they could do right now, she didn’t need to intervene and risk her own core. He was perfectly safe, and so was she.